Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

CLYDE PORT AUTHORITY BILL

Order for Third Reading read.

To be read the Third time on Monday 2 July at Seven o'clock.

ASSOCIATED BRITISH PORTS (No. 2) BILL (By Order)

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question proposed [25 June],

That this House doth agree with the Lords in their amendment to clause 3, page 3, line 10, to leave out '85' and insert '85E', instead thereof:

Debate further adjourned till Thursday 5 July.

REDBRIDGE LONDON BOROUGH COUNCIL BILL (By Order)

Order for consideration of Lords amendment read.

To be considered on Thursday 5 July.

MEDWAY TUNNEL BILL [Lords] (By Order)

As amended, considered; to be read the Third time.

BRITISH RAILWAYS (No. 2) BILL (By Order)

Order for consideration, as amended, read.

To be considered on Thursday 5 July.

BIRMINGHAM CITY COUNCIL (No. 2) BILL (By Order)

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question proposed [26 February],

That the Bill be now considered.

Debate further adjourned till Thursday 5 July.

SHARD BRIDGE BILL (By Order)

Read a Second time and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

GREAT YARMOUTH PORT AUTHORITY BILL [Lords] (By Order)

Order for Second Reading read.

To be read a Second time on Tuesday 3 July.

Mr. Speaker: As the remaining eight private Bills set down for Second Reading have blocking motions, with the leave of the House I shall put them as a single group.

PORT OF TYNE BILL [Lords] (By Order)

LONDON UNDERGROUND BILL (By Order)

HEATHROW EXPRESS RAILWAY BILL [Lords]
(By Order)

CATTEWATER RECLAMATION BILL (By Order)

VALE OF GLAMORGAN (BARRY HARBOUR) BILL
[Lords] (By Order)

Order for Second Reading read.

To be read a Second time on Thursday 5 July.

LONDON REGIONAL TRANSPORT (PENALTY FARES) BILL (By Order)

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question proposed [10 May],

That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Debate further adjourned till Thursday 5 July.

SOUTHAMPTON RAPID TRANSIT BILL [Lords] (By Order)

Order for Second Reading read.

To be read a Second time on Thursday 5 July.

EXMOUTH DOCKS BILL (By Order)

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question proposed [29 March],

That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Debate further adjourned till Thursday 5 July.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

Set-aside Scheme

Mr. Hague: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what steps he is taking to review the workings of the set-aside scheme.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. David Curry): We have been reviewing the scheme in the light of the first two years of operation and we shall be announcing decisions when the third year of the scheme opens.

Mr. Hague: Does my hon. Friend agree that the set-aside scheme will need significant changes if it is to be made acceptable to farmers and the public? Will he consider bringing forward cutting dates and supporting an extension of the countryside premium scheme? Most important, will he ensure that any proposals to support the so-called grazed fallow do not allow the grazing of additional breeding stock on set-aside land, because that would undermine the business of existing traditional livestock producers?

Mr. Curry: The Government recognise the great importance of the uplands for livestock grazing. However, there are anomalies in the present scheme. For example, if a farmer who has set-aside and livestock suffers from drought and runs out of fodder, he cannot use set-aside land to feed his livestock. There is a case for some flexibility, which would also be in the interest of the environment. If we make changes or introduce flexibility, they will be limited and designed to protect the traditional activities on the uplands, which I and 25 of my hon. Friends represent.

Mr. Skinner: Notwithstanding the complex question of the hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), is not he really saying that he wants farmers to get more money to watch the grass grow?

Mr. Curry: Watching the grass grow is an environmentally friendly activity and, of course, many wild species breed in the grass, so there is a good case for watching it grow. The scheme does not pay farmers to do nothing because they have to maintain their normal farming activity over the major part of the farm, and the taxpayer gets an extremely good deal for not having to finance surplus production on land that is set aside.

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy

Mr. Holt: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many parents of schoolchildren in Cleveland have made representations to him about BSE.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John Gummer): I have received representations about BSE from various organisations and individuals. I am sure that many parents of schoolchildren in Cleveland are unhappy that children compulsorily taught science and scientific values are now compulsorily being denied beef on entirely emotional grounds.

Mr. Holt: I thank my right hon. Friend for his answer. I should be surprised if any parents had written directly to the Ministry. There is no evidence from my postbag of any such representations from Cleveland parents. I have checked with my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin) and he has not had any either. Yet despite that, the Labour-controlled county council imposed a ban on beef long after most of the other county councils that did, damaging farming interests in the north-east and giving comfort to our competitors on the continent.

Mr. Gummer: One should not judge the matter on the basis of whether this or that interest is damaged. One must judge it on the scientific basis of whether eating beef is safe. The chief medical officer said unequivocally that it is and the scientific advice given to the Government and the EC supported that statement. I find it odd that Cleveland county council considers that its local advice is better than the national advice.

Mr. Bell: I am sure that the Minister would not wish to mislead the House. Is he aware that good quality lean beef is still on the menu in Cleveland schools? What are not on the menu are products made from beef offal and mechanically recovered beef, and that is completely different. Is the Minister aware that Cleveland county council received advice from Professor Peter Blair of the department of environmental medicine, Newcastle university, and from Dr. Ted Holt at Middlesbrough general hospital, who specialises in BSE and scrapie? Therefore does the Minister accept that the subsequent decision was not alarmist but a sensible response to the representations of school governors, parents and teachers? Was not that a sensible approach when there was near panic on the continent of Europe?

Mr. Gummer: I should have thought that, of all hon. Members, the hon. Gentleman would be careful about taking the medical advice of an individual of one sort or other. He knows how careful one has to be. Therefore, I say quite clearly that the chief medical officer, an independent person, made it clear that, in all the areas that the hon. Gentleman is talking about, beef is safe to eat. The European Community's scientific advice is exactly the same, as is the advice given to the Government. Science cannot be taught, and we cannot expect it to be accepted in our schools, if local education committees refuse to accept scientific advice and proceed on an emotional basis.

Mr. Marland: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Is it about Cleveland?

Mr. Marland: It is, Mr. Speaker.
Is my right hon. Friend aware that, in seeking to reassure the schoolchildren of Cleveland and other British citizens about the purity and safety of British beef, he has been greatly frustrated in his task by a bogus professor and by Opposition Members who make completely unsubstantiated claims, unscientifically based, about the possible dangers, as they see it, of British beef?

Mr. Gummer: I think that my hon. Friend would want me to be clear that my first priority is to protect the health of the nation. I have absolutely no other priority. Great damage has been done by the creation of unnecessary anxiety. Part of that damage is that our ability to warn


people where warnings are necessary has been undermined, as we found, for example, on the contamination of seafood. Yes, we must stand firm on the fact that British beef is safe to eat for adults, children and even the most vulnerable. I hope that Cleveland will soon reverse its ban.

Dr. David Clark: Does the Minister appreciate that parents in Cleveland are often also pet owners? Does he realise that many of them, in the same way as pet owners elsewhere, are deeply concerned that four cats have been verified as having died of spongiform encephalopathy and that a further 20 are suspected of having done so? Will the Minister grapple with that problem and take decisive action by banning the use of cattle and sheep offal in all pet food?

Mr. Gummer: I think that hon. Members will agree that we are concerned about the interests of pet owners and pets. But I wonder why the hon. Gentleman has moved the question from the subject of schoolchildren in Cleveland. Is it because he does not agree with Cleveland county council's ban? The hon. Gentleman's figures are completely wrong. Twenty cats were tested and found not to have an encephalopathy. Four cats—and I announced the figures one by one, of course—were found to have one, but there is no evidence that any of them were connected with BSE.

Food Safety

Mr. Martyn Jones: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the National Federation of Women's Institutes to discuss food safety.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. David Maclean): Representatives of the National Federation of Women's Institutes were present at the first periodic meeting on 3 April 1990 between my right hon. Friend and consumer organisations. The next meeting is planned for 12 July. In addition, I had a meeting with the women's institutes on 16 January.

Mr. Jones: The Minister will shortly be receiving representations from the National Federation of Women's Institutes about the problem of bovine somatotropin, when he will be asked to use all his efforts to have the product banned in the European Community and not to grant a licence for its use. Will he take those points on board and respond to them?

Mr. Maclean: I read carefully the motion that was passed at the WI conference, and I have no hesitation in saying that there is no question of the British Government allowing any product, including BST, to be used in this country unless it fully satisfies licensing requirements. As the hon. Gentleman knows, there is currently a moratorium on BST imposed by the European Community, which we are content to go along with.

Mr. Riddick: When my hon. Friend next meets that august body of ladies, will he explain that one of the most likely consequences of the BST threat will be an increase of beef imports from countries in South America and Africa, where regulations against diseases such as foot and mouth and tuberculosis are far less stringent than here? Does not that represent the real threat to food safety in this country?

Does my hon. Friend agree that Labour Front-Bench spokesmen who have done so much to stir up fears about BST ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves?

Mr. Maclean: My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the high standard of foodstuffs in this country, especially beef. I can reassure him that we do not allow into this country any food that poses a health risk, so the concerns that he expresses about beef from other parts of the world should not materialise. He is also right to condemn the official Opposition, just as they were condemned by every party in the House when my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food delivered his statement late on Thursday 7 June, after returning from negotiations in Brussels. They were rightly condemned because they were seeking to create a new myth that, somehow or other, the British housewife is less well protected than the foreign housewife—and that is just not true.

Dr. David Clark: When the Minister meets WI representatives, will he discuss with them the authoritative study by the Audit Commission showing that almost one in eight food premises in England and Wales presented a significant or imminent health risk? Given that it has been deliberate Government policy to reduce support for environmental health officers and that we are now more than 400 officers short, will the Minister announce a reversal of that policy and an increase in the number of trained inspectors and environmental health officers?

Mr. Maclean: If the WI does not put that item on the agenda, I should certainly like to do so. I warmly welcome the Audit Commission's findings on food safety enforcement, and if environmental health officers discover in their survey a certain number of premises that do not come up to standard, they will have the Government's full backing in taking action against them. That is why the Food Safety Bill was passed in another place yesterday. It provides an extra £30 million for enforcement and gives new powers to environmental health officers to take action against the unacceptable minority. We have some of the finest food in the world here and we will not let a minority of filthy, scruffy takeaways or downmarket restaurants or shops destroy the reputation of the majority of our excellent eating establishments.

Food Exports

Mr. Ian Taylor: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what contribution the food industry has made to Britain's export performance in the current year.

Mr. Curry: In the year to March 1990, United Kingdom exports of food and drink amounted to nearly £5·7 billion, about 6 per cent. of the total value of our visible exports.

Mr. Taylor: My hon. Friend gives slightly more encouraging figures than has been the trend in recent years. As he is widely acknowledged as a gourmet, he will know that British raw materials for food are about the best in the world. What are the Government doing to encourage people abroad to benefit in the same way from British food? Given that the food and drink industry is the largest employer and the largest industry in the European Community, and that many of the largest companies are


multinational, we must ensure that our products are available throughout the Community on a wider basis after 1992.

Mr. Curry: I agree with my hon. Friend. As he will know, we have just appointed Mr. Paul Judge as the new chairman of Food From Britain, which is our major promotional arm, and which has been endowed with £3.5 million. The Government will contribute £1 for every £3 raised by business to promote British food. This is an important issue, and we intend to ensure that British food is widely available on the continent because of its excellence.

Dr. Godman: Fish and shellfish form part of our exports. As regards the export of farmed Scottish salmon, what action is the Minister taking to persuade the European Commission to institute anti-dumping measures against Norwegian farmed salmon producers? Was not that one of the recommendations in yesterday's Agriculture Select Committee report on "Fish Farming in the UK"? What action are the Government taking to persuade the Commission to sort out that dumping problem?

Mr. Curry: The Government have actively promoted the anti-dumping case on behalf of farmed salmon producers in the United Kingdom. I have spoken directly to the Norwegian Minister responsible for trade about the issue. I understand that in recent months there has been some relief, in the sense that the Norwegians have taken certain measures, and that prices of farmed salmon have begun to recover. This is a most important issue, and we shall continue to press the case with the Commission until we are certain that competition is fair throughout the Community.

Mr. Gregory: Will my hon. Friend hold discussions with his colleagues in the Department of Trade and Industry to ensure that the food industry has the backing of our offices abroad as far as possible, especially because of the difficulties that some food industries have encountered with counterfeiting, so that we may increase exports by the food industry and that great British companies, in particular, confectionary companies, do not continue to suffer in this way—and Kit Kat can be exported without the problem of counterfeit Kit Kit?

Mr. Curry: I shall certainly undertake to discuss that matter with my friends from the Department of Trade and Industry. My hon. Friend will know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State recently visited several countries in eastern Europe with the specific purpose of promoting, among other things, British food exports and exports of British food-producing machinery to those countries.

Scotch Whisky

Mr. Canavan: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he plans to meet the representatives of the Scotch whisky industry; and what subjects he expects to be raised.

Mr. Curry: I shall discuss anything that the industry wants, provided that it is within my competence.

Mr. Canavan: Will the Minister discuss the concern of the Scottish Consumer Council about the introduction of

the 25 ml measure to replace the existing choice of measures, normally a quarter or a fifth of a gill in Scotland and a sixth of a gill in England? As that would mean a slight increase in the normal measure served in English pubs, but a decrease of about 12 per cent. in the average measure in a Scottish pub, will the Government intervene to ensure the retention of a choice of measures, or at the very least, to ensure that the Scottish punter gets the benefit of at least a 12 per cent. cut in price for the metric short measure?

Mr. Curry: This appears to be yet another example of the Scots getting more per capita than the English. I shall certainly mention it to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. Of course, we want to ensure that consumers throughout the United Kingdom have the benefit of the excellent product that is made in Scotland.

Mr. Bill Walker: When my hon. Friend discusses with the Scotch whisky industry its future, will he draw attention to its splendid record in the export market and to the fact that the quality of its products—worth £1,000 million of exports every year—has been protected by the Scotch Whisky Act 1988? Can my hon. Friend say what stage we have reached with the implementation of that Act and the subsequent orders?

Mr. Curry: As my hon. Friend will know, because he has taken a strong interest in the matter—indeed, he promoted the Scotch Whisky Bill—the Scotch Whisky Order 1990, which protects minimum strength and defines Scotch, was passed by the House last month, and the spirits Drinks Order, which adds the final touch to the process, is to complete its passage today. That gives the Government an excellent record in protecting and promoting Scotch whisky.

Mr. Allen: When the Minister meets representatives of the industry, will he discuss with them the difficulties of small independent brewers who, following the Monopolies and Mergers Commission report, expected—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Whisky is not brewed, is it?

Mr. Allen: The small independent brewers expected to introduce guest beers into some of the larger breweries' pubs. Will the Minister meet—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is rather wide of the question, which is about whisky, not beer. I hope that he will finish his remarks quickly.

Mr. Allen: The small independent brewers also wish to retail Scotch. Will the Minister meet his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and ensure that those small independent brewers can sell Scotch whisky and their own beers over the counter in pubs throughout the land?

Mr. Curry: The hon. Gentleman is clearly used to drinking his Scotch with a beer chaser, even if he had some difficulty in accommodating whisky in his question. I also represent a constituency that has an outstandingly small brewery, which brews the beer "Old Peculier" in particular, and I shall of course ensure that I do my best to protect the interests of the small artisanal beer producer.

Consumer Panel

Mr. Morley: to ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when his consumer panel last met; and what matters were discussed.

Mr. Maclean: The last meeting of the consumer panel was on 2 May 1990. We discussed a wide range of issues, including water quality, food labelling, BSE, food irradiation and hygiene training for food handlers. A copy of the minutes of the meeting is in the Library of the House.

Mr. Morley: Does the Minister agree with the recent Consumers Association report, which says that the public are losing confidence in the Ministry's assertions about all the recent food scares? The Consumers Association says that the "bland assurances" that the public have received have failed to reassure them on a whole range of issues and that what is needed is an independent food agency. Does the Minister agree with our view that we need a food standard agency, independent of both the industry and the Government, which can give the public and the consumer the assurances that they need?

Mr. Maclean: Despite the best attempts of the official Opposition to rubbish British beef, more than 80 per cent. of our consumers are still buying it because they are content to believe the assurances of the British Government, the independent experts who advise us and the chief medical officer. The hon. Gentleman asks for a source of independent advice. What does he think the Food Advisory Committee, the Advisory Committee on Pesticides, the Veterinary Products Committee, the Tyrrell committee and the Southwood committee are there for? The hon. Gentleman asks for independent advice, but when we get such advice and act on it, the Labour party goes out and tries to rubbish the self-same advice that it claims it would like to believe.

Mr. Colin Shepherd: When my hon. Friend next meets the consumer panel, will he impress on its members the remarkable contribution that is made to our economy by the agricultural sector of the food industry? Will he express his regret that the efforts of the farmers of Britain should be undermined and maligned at every possible opportunity by the Opposition, when they should be praised for their productivity, dedication and effectiveness?

Mr. Maclean: I think that the official Opposition will regret some of the wilder statements that they have made about British beef and other food issues in the past few months. British consumers realise, as my right hon. Friend said on the day when he was made Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, that farmers' interests and consumers' interests are one. If the consumer is satisfied with the quality of our food, that is in the interests of our farmers who produce such excellent food.

Mr. Geraint Howells: After months of adverse publicity, does the Minister agree that it would be advantageous for consumers and producers in Britain if hon. Members or official agriculture spokesmen from every political party in the House were to issue a joint statement saying that British beef and British foodstuffs are healthier than any others in the world?

Mr. Maclean: I wholeheartedly endorse what the hon. Gentleman has said. It is notable that throughout this

issue he has followed the scientific advice and accepted the facts as given to him and he has been supported by the Welsh nationalists, by the various Irish parties and by all other parties present in the House late on Thursday 7 June. The hon. Gentleman's remarks are very welcome and I support his initiative.

Food Research

Mr. Jacques Arnold: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how much he plans to spend from his Department's funds on food research in the current year.

Mr. Gummer: My Department plans to spend more than £20 million on food research in 1990–91, of which more than £15 million is earmarked for safety, hygiene, applied nutrition and consumer protection.

Mr Arnold: Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that that considerable sum is being invested in food research which responds to public concern about food safety and which also highlights the high standards of our food processors and packagers? Will he give examples of the different forms of research being carried out?

Mr. Gummer: As we are concerned with more than 800 different projects at the moment, my hon. Friend will understand if I do not go through them all in detail. We are trying not only to respond to the public disquiet about this and that, but to ensure that there is no public disquiet about things which might arise. When I visited the food research laboratories in Norwich recently, I was interested to see a wide range of research, all of which will help to ensure that British food continues to be the safest in the world.

Mr. Ron Brown: Is the Minister aware that on the east coast, and especially on the east coast of Scotland, sprats are caught by Scandinavian fishermen, taken to Scandinavia for canning and brought back here labelled as sardines? Surely the British consumer has the right to know what the product is and where it comes from. Will the Minister have a word with his counterparts in the Scandinavian countries to ensure that at least the labelling is correct so that consumers know what they are buying?

Mr. Gummer: I am not sure that in this case the labelling would have a direct effect on the safety of the sprats or sardines when eaten, but if there is a problem in terms of misleading the consumer I shall be happy to take it up at once because it is a fundamental principle of the Ministry that we ensure that the consumer has full information so that he can make his own decisions and not have them forced on him by others who think that they know best.

Mrs. Peacock: Will my right hon. Friend tell the House and many worried people in Britain whether any of the money that he proposes to spend will go to Professor Lacey and his research?

Mr. Gummer: When we choose the recipients of money for research, we do so on the advice of their peers—their scientific equals. One of the difficulties with some people who seek to do research is that they are not over-eager to provide information about their research to their scientific equals or to the committees set up to judge them.

Live Exports

Mr. Matthew Taylor: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the animal welfare implications of the trade in live exports.

Mr. Gummer: There are detailed controls to ensure that animals leave this country rested, fed and watered, and inspected. We shall seek to maintain proper welfare safeguards under the proposed Community measures on transport of animals.

Mr. Taylor: I am sure that the Secretary of State is aware that there is a lobby today on this issue and that there is great concern that the new EC rules will remove measures that the House has seen fit to pass to protect animals being transported in terms of where they go and the conditions in which they are transported. Horses are not exported live at present, but they could be in the future.
Will the Secretary of State take every possible step and fight every inch of the way to defend the existing Government protections which apply to animals in Britain and which far exceed the protections in other parts of the EC? If necessary, will he invoke article 36 which allows us to prevent free trade on issues of public morality so that we can protect those animals?

Mr. Gummer: I have already said, some months ago, that I want to increase European Community standards on animal welfare across the board. I notice that today's lobby is led by Compassion in World Farming. I cannot manage matters outside the Community, but we have to solve the problem of animal welfare not only in Britain but throughout the Community. Some of the proposals that have been put forward could harm the welfare of animals in the rest of Europe by raising standards here but not throughout Europe. It is a European matter and I am determined to take the lead in that regard.
The Government will fight all the way along the line for the present system of minimum value for the export of live horses. Other animals are subject to EC rules, so those rules must be of the highest standard. There is no possibility of using article 36. I am advised quite clearly that it would not apply.

Dame Janet Fookes: I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement about the export of horses, but can I persuade him to accept the view of the British Veterinary Association that animals should be slaughtered as close to the point of production as possible? Will he seek to put that view to his allies in the European Community?

Mr. Gummer: Our purpose is to raise standards throughout the European Community. The problem with the transport of live animals is that many other countries in the European Community do not share the view of the British Veterinary Association. My job is to get the best answer that we can and then to improve on it. My hon. Friend has my wholehearted support in her efforts to bring pressure on my allies in the European Community. On the matter of animal welfare, the number of my allies could do with some augmentation.

Mr. Tony Banks: I appreciate that the Secretary of State is a voracious carnivore and likely to eat anything with legs other than a table, but is he aware that, despite his assurances to the House, a great deal of suffering is still

caused to animals moved out of Britain for slaughter? Would not it be better, and meet the demands of the great majority of people in Britain, if no live animals were allowed to leave our shores for slaughter on the continent?

Mr. Gummer: The fact is that that would be illegal, and this country stands by the law. Under European Community regulations, there has to be the movement of live animals. My job is to improve those regulations. The hon. Gentleman blames the European Community, but at least in the European Community we have a chance to raise standards for all animals in Europe, or perhaps the hon. Gentleman takes such an insular view that he cares only about British animals.

Sir Richard Body: Does my right hon. Friend agree that since, on grounds of animal welfare, we ended the system of rearing calves in veal crates, there has been a massive increase in the number of calves exported to France, Belgium and the Netherlands? About 1,000 calves per day are now exported to those countries. What proportion of those calves does my right hon. Friend believe are being reared in the very crates that we sought to abolish in Britain?

Mr. Gummer: My hon. Friend puts his finger exactly on the point. If we do not raise standards throughout Europe, we shall make changes at home, for estimable reasons, only to find that the situation is worse in the rest of the continent. For that reason, three days ago I took the lead in the European Community Council to press for higher standards which would eliminate the very practices to which my hon. Friend refers. We now have a new programme which will make major changes in the rearing of calves and also the way in which pigs are cared for. I hope that that will be a further earnest of our determination to improve animal welfare throughout the Community.

Toxic Algae

Mr. Morgan: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether his Department has carried out research into links between the recent toxic algae outbreak on the east coast and pollution.

Mr. Curry: The evidence is that blooms of toxic algae are naturally occurring and are triggered primarily by combinations of calm water and good sunlight.

Mr. Morgan: I accept the Minister's answer, but does he agree that the emergence of a 300-mile toxic algal scum slick shows that using the North sea as an international flush lavatory is not doing the quality of the water any good? Does he further agree that we need an international agreement to stop these long sea outfalls? In the light of the comments made yesterday by the Minister of Sport about the effluent tendency, does he agree that the main body of people in this country with a tendency towards effluent are Ministers?

Mr. Curry: The hon. Gentleman is getting his science mixed up. There is no link between the production of these blooms and pollution. They were first noticed in 1814, which was mainly a pre-industrial society. The most recent manifestation was on the west coast of Scotland. It is difficult to get further than that from population centres or intensive agriculture. That supports the evidence that it is


naturally occurring. In only five years since 1968 has some warning not had to be posted, so the relationship between that phenomenon and what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting is impossible to prove.

Sir Hugh Rossi: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Ministry must accept that there is a nexus between nutrients and growth? Does he agree that nitrates and phosphates are fed on greedily by algae? Although they must have benign warm conditions in which to flourish, if their source of food were reduced or cut off they would not grow to the extent that they are growing at present.

Mr. Curry: My hon. Friend is perfectly correct, but nitrates and phosphates occur naturally in the water, as they did at the beginning of the 19th century when the phenomenon was first noticed. There is no link between the discharge of sewage into the North sea, which we have undertaken to stop, and these blooms.

Mr. Morley: The House cannot accept that at all. We know very well that phosphates increase algal bloom. I urge the Minister to listen carefully to the comments of the Chairman of the Select Committee on the Environment. Will he confirm that the Ministry's scientists have said that one of the reasons why the outbreak was so long and intense was that there was a constant source of nutrients in the sea off the east coast, the main source of which is raw sewage dumping and raw sewage outfalls?

Mr. Curry: That is simply not the case. The blooms appeared because currents brought the seeds to the surface, where they were in warm water and sunlight. That has occurred around Britain's coast, most recently in the west of Scotland, where there are no population centres or major intensive farming which would supplement the water with nutrients, so the link simply has not been established.

Sausages

Sir Michael McNair-Wilson: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what effect the EEC directive on minced meat will have on the future of the British sausage.

Mr. Maclean: The Government will fight to ensure that future Community measures will have no adverse effect on the British sausage.

Sir Michael McNair-Wilson: Does my hon. Friend agree that, as currently drafted, the EC proposals endanger the future of the British sausage after 1990? Does he agree that it is a safe, succulent, satisfying snack and with mash it is almost superlative? The British public enjoy £500 million worth of sausages each year. The proposals will do nothing to improve food hygiene and are likely to increase the cost of this most estimable product to the British consumer. If we have no objection to other countries' salami and bratwurst, why can they not leave our toad in the hole alone?

Mr. Maclean: My hon. Friend has made a number of valid points. Many of us in the House have moved straight from the baby's bottle to the British banger. The proposed draft directives will have no effect on hygiene requirements for the existing British sausage. People in the House and outside who want to eat raw minced beef or steak tartare

can choose to do so, but the millions of people in Britain who want to eat cooked British sausages do not need unnecessary EC rules.

Mr. Wigley: Does the Minister accept that the logic of the rules may not be to improve hygiene, but to achieve unfair competition and commercial advantage at the expense of manufacturers in this country, which could lead to the loss of valuable jobs in many areas, including my constituency? Will the Minister ensure that he stands up and fights for the future of those jobs?

Mr. Maclean: I will certainly do that. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will take to task the Opposition agriculture spokesman who said that he would refuse to eat British beef sausages, when there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. We all understand the necessity for tougher rules on minced beef which might be eaten raw, but there is no need for the rules about cooked sausages.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER

Engagements

Mr. Couchman: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 28 June.

The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): This morning I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today, including one with the Governor of Hong Kong.

Mr. Couchman: Does my right hon. Friend agree that properly enforced tough controls on dangerous dogs and their owners offer far greater security and reassurance to the public, and particularly to children, than a bureaucratic dog registration scheme of the kind currently obsessing the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the upshot of which would be that responsible owners would register and irresponsible owners would not?

The Prime Minister: Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend. It is not the identification of the owner which has been the problem, but to make certain that owners control their dogs properly. Yesterday further significant proposals were announced to toughen the law. Our proposals will strengthen the powers for dangerous dogs to be seized and, if necessary, destroyed. They will create new powers to allow courts to have dogs muzzled. We are also looking at the possibility of banning certain dog breeds all together.

Mr. Kinnock: Since the Prime Minister has publicly admitted that she was, in her own words,
aware of the … terms and conditions of the arrangements reached with British Aerospace
in relation to the sale of Rover, will she confirm that her knowledge of those arrangements included details of the £44 million sweeteners of which Parliament was never to be told?

The Prime Minister: As I indicated on 14 December 1989
I was kept aware throughout of the progress of the negotiations with British Aerospace and … of the basic terms and conditions of the agreements reached".—[Official Report, 14 December 1989; Vol. 163, c. 770.]


Our priority at the time was to safeguard the interests of the company, the employees and the taxpayer. That objective was secured and billions of pounds of future state aids and taxpayers' money was thus saved.

Mr. Kinnock: On 30 November last year I asked the Prime Minister twice if she knew of all the arrangements about the sweeteners. She dodged the question then, and she is trying to dodge it now. Will she give a straight answer to a straight question? When she says that she knew of the arrangements, did her knowledge include, or did it not include, knowledge of the sweeteners of which this Parliament, the European Community and the British people were never to be told?

The Prime Minister: rose—

Hon. Members: Yes or no?

Mr. Speaker: Order.

The Prime Minister: I answered the question on 14 December 1989. I was kept aware throughout of the progress of the negotiations at British Aerospace under the basic terms and conditions of the agreements reached. [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes or no?"] Our main objective was to secure the privatisation of this company which was utterly bankrupt and broke and on which the taxpayers—[HON. MEMBERS: "Yes or no?"]—had already spent £3·5 billion in aids and a further £1·6 billion in contingent liabilities. We successfully privatised the company and it is profitable, but that means nothing to the right hon. Gentleman. [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes or no?"] The right hon. Gentleman would probably have preferred to have the company nationalised so that taxpayers could continue to be fleeced.

Mr. Kinnock: What does mean something to me, and should mean something to the Prime Minister, is the integrity of the right hon. Lady herself. Did she know, or did she not know, that £44 million of illegal sweeteners was part of the deal?

Hon. Members: Answer!

The Prime Minister: I answered the hon. Gentleman in the reply that I gave on 14 December 1989. May I say how very much the Opposition have changed their tune—[interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The Prime Minister has been asked a series of questions and she wishes to reply.

The Prime Minister: The Opposition have changed their tune from the line which they took on 14 July 1988 when—

Hon. Members: Yes or no?

Mr. Speaker: Order. It is intolerable that when the Prime Minister has been asked a qustion she is not given an opportunity to reply. [HON. MEMBERS: "She will not answer."] Order. I call the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister: On 14 July 1988 my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, as he then was, informed the House of the results of the negotiations and what had taken place. The hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould), replying to my right hon. and learned Friend—

Hon. Members: Answer—yes or no?

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Allen: She has had three chances.

Mr. Speaker: Order. This is the House of Commons and we listen to the answers given to questions.

The Prime Minister: The hon. Member for Dagenham, replying to my right hon. and learned Friend and referring to my right hon. and learned Friend's latest visit to the Commission as going cap in hand to Brussels to beg for concessions said, if the House is quiet enough or interested enough to hear—

Mr. Allen: rose—

The Prime Minister: The hon. Member for Dagenham said—

Mr. Allen: She has taken seven minutes.

Mr. Speaker: Order. If the hon. Gentleman continues to shout, of course it will take time.

The Prime Minister: When my right hon. and learned Friend the then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was announcing the result, the hon. Member for Dagenham said of the Commission:
How is it that an unelected official can tell the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry that his terms are non-negotiable?"—[Official Report, 14 July 1988; Vol. 137, c. 613.]
That is what the hon. Gentleman said, but the Opposition have changed their tune.

Mr. Jessel: On the occasion of the most welcome visit of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association delegates from India, led by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, will my right hon. Friend confirm the Government's policy as being to continue to uphold Britain's excellent relations with India?

The Prime Minister: Yes. I was not aware of that visit, but we have excellent relations with India. We give it priority with our aid, and have recently agreed to help it each year to enable it to keep its rain forests.

Mr. Ashdown: Now that we know that nuclear power is twice as expensive for the consumer as any other form of power, and that it is less cost effective than energy conservation in protecting the environment, why does the Prime Minister insist that every electricity consumer should pay a special nuclear tax amounting to £25 on the average electricity bill to meet the cost of her obsession and her Government's bungling over nuclear power? Have not Sizewell B and the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Parkinson) already cost the nation too much, and should not the right hon. Lady pull the plug on both of them?

The Prime Minister: I will take the question on Sizewell B first. Sizewell B will cost more than originally expected because the original order was for four nuclear power stations of a particular design. However, now that only one is definitely to be built—Sizewell B—all the original design and development costs will have to be added to the cost of that one station, instead of being spread over four. It is not unusual for the costs to increase. If we had four nuclear power stations, the cost of Sizewell B would not be great.
In the right hon. Gentleman's second question, he said that nuclear power cost more. We know the costs for the disposal of the fission products of nuclear power. When


that is compared with the cost of obtaining electricity from coal or oil, the problem is that we do not know the costs of dumping carbon dioxide in outer space, which could be much worse in the long run than those of nuclear power. The right hon. Gentleman may remember that France has a good record on reducing carbon dioxide emissions because the majority of her electricity is generated from nuclear power.

Lebanon

Mr. Latham: To ask the Prime Minister whether she will make a statement on diplomatic contacts designed to achieve the release of British citizens held captive by Iranian-backed terrorist groups in Lebanon.

The Prime Minister: The plight of the British citizens held hostage is constantly in the minds of all of us. We have raised the matter with a wide range of Governments and organisations which might have influence on the hostage holders. We shall continue to use every contact and follow up every lead that we believe might bring results.

Mr. Latham: Will my right hon. Friend press the Iranian Government to abide by normal decent standards of international behaviour and bring about the release of those entirely innocent people in Lebanon forthwith? Will she also press that Government to do something about the absolutely abominable human rights situation in Iran?

The Prime Minister: Our position on hostages is well known. We take precisely the view that my hon. Friend has just expressed. Any nation that has any information, or any influence on those who are holding hostages, should do all in its power to secure their release, as that is the only norm of civilised behaviour. We ask Iran to do that as well. My hon. Friend knows that our ambassador in Lebanon is actively following up every lead.
With regard to human rights in Iran, we welcome the decision by the Iranian Government to invite the United Nations special representative on human rights to pay a second visit to Iran. We hope that he will be given full facilities to investigate thoroughly all aspects of human rights there, and any breaches of those rights by the Iranian Government.

Mr. Brazier: rose—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I believe that the hon. Gentleman has recently returned from the Lebanon.

Mr. Brazier: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, while we must have the greatest sympathy for the hostages and their families, we must never do anything to undermine her strong stand against international terrorism? We must remember at all times that these groups are backed on the one hand by Iranians who have condemned a British citizen to death and on the other by the Syrians who continue to shelter the principal suspects of the Lockerbie bombing.

The Prime Minister: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As he knows, we broke off diplomatic relations with Syria because of its part in helping to place the bomb on the El Al aircraft. Diplomatic relations could not possibly continue in those circumstances. We do not think it right to restore those diplomatic relations yet, but we plead with Iran and Syria to do all in their power in the modern world

to secure the release of hostages. That is the only way for civilised nations, which expect to be welcomed into diplomatic international circles, to behave.

Engagements

Mr. Marland: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 28 June.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Marland: As my right hon. Friend knows, Gloucestershire county council is run by the soggy hand of the Liberal Alliance and has spent millions of pounds over an already excessive budget, which is causing great anxiety to many of my constituents. In her review of the working of the community charge, will my right hon. Friend seek to ensure that some mechanism is introduced to curb such profligacy?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is quite right about Gloucestershire. This year it has increased its expenditure by twice the rate of inflation. In our review of the community charge we are certainly bearing in mind that chargepayers want to be protected against the excessive spending of such councils. We shall bring forward proposals before the House rises.

Mr. Haynes: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 28 June.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Haynes: rose—

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Mr. Haynes: rose—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Let us give the hon. Gentleman a fair chance.

Mr. Haynes: Mr. Speaker, Sir. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear"] Is the Prime Minister aware that the crime figures presented today are appalling? Is she also aware that the morale of the police force in the various constabularies across the country is at its lowest ebb? Is she also aware of the fiddle that has been going on about Aerospace? How does she expect British citizens to behave themselves when the Government go on like that? Is she aware that the Government sanction—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that the House has now been made aware of two questions—that is enough.

The Prime Minister: In so far as I was able to hear the hon. Gentleman, yes, the crime figures out today are extremely disappointing, although we must remember that violent crime in this country occurs on a very much lesser scale than in some other countries. The overall figures show that 25 per cent. of all crime is car related, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary intends to have talks with car producers to see if we can reduce that figure.
I do not accept that the morale of the police is low. They have had a very good deal on pay—so good that everyone else wants to emulate them—and they have had full support from the Government in their most important work.
With regard to British Aerospace as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry explained in his statement on 30 November 1989, the relative items of which the hon. Gentleman was speaking were included
in the estimates and reports to Parliament. Full details were made available to the Comptroller and Auditor General"—[Official Report, 30 November 1989; Vol. 162, c. 859.]
Finally may I point out what the Commission says in its report—

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Did you know?

The Prime Minister: The Commission said that the price of £150 million represented a reasonable purchase price, given all of the circumstances of the sale.

Mr. Haynes: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I want to make it clear to you—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I will take points of order later.

European Council (Dublin)

The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a statement on the European Council in Dublin on 25–26 June, which I attended with my right hon. Friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary.
The text of the Council's conclusions have been placed in the Library of the House. I will go through the main points in order.
Completion of the single market represents the biggest and most far-reaching change under way in western Europe. Useful progress has been made under the Irish presidency in the transport and energy sectors, on public procurement and on company taxation. In Dublin, we set priorities for the next six months. They include items of particular importance for the United Kingdom; financial services, insurance, further liberalisation of transport and public procurement.
But it is not just a matter of taking decisions. They need to be implemented. The Commission circulated to the Council a chart showing Britain right at the forefront of member states when it comes to implementation. It will in future make regular reports to the European Council on this.
The members of the Council also called on Germany to reconsider its discriminatory tax on lorries, about which the Commission is taking the German Government to the European Court.
The Council continued its discussion on political union. It was agreed that an intergovernmental conference will begin in December. Our determination to see national institutions and national identities fully respected is clearly understood and increasingly shared. The debate is more and more about how to make existing Community institutions more effective. We shall continue to argue that the Community should be involved only where particular objectives cannot be achieved by national action.
In that context, I drew attention to the unnecessary, indeed harmful, proposals put forward by the Commission on part-time and temporary work. If implemented, they would only lead to loss of jobs.
We had a brief discussion on economic and monetary union. We confirmed that an intergovernmental conference on that will begin in December, in parallel with the conference on political union. I commended the excellent proposals put forward by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. We shall ensure that they are fully considered before, and at, the intergovernmental conference. I reminded my colleagues of the strong opposition expressed by this House to economic and monetary union on the basis proposed in the Delors report.
The Council agreed a useful declaration on the environment, and further steps to combat drug addiction and trafficking. Our proposals for a European drugs intelligence unit and for a conference of eastern and western European countries on drugs issues were endorsed.
The Council underlined the very great importance which the Community attaches to a successful outcome to the Uruguay round of the trade negotiations and our intention to make a full contribution to that. That will be discussed further at the economic summit in Houston.
We had a thorough discussion on assistance to the Soviet Union. Britain has constantly been at the forefront in supporting Mr. Gorbachev and his policies of greater democracy and reform. We are very ready to consider various forms of assistance, provided it is clearly linked to economic restructuring, so that we know it will actually be effective. The Council agreed that a thorough analysis should be undertaken of the size of the problem and how the Community and other western countries can help. This will be conducted by the Commission, together with experts from the new European bank for reconstruction and development, the World bank and the IMF, the OECD and others. When that is complete, we can see what needs to be done, and then we can take decisions.
Foreign Ministers discussed a number of foreign policy issues and agreed statements dealing with the middle east, South Africa, Cyprus, nuclear non-proliferation, anti-semitism and the Iranian earthquake.
The Council called on all parties in South Africa to refrain from violence and advocacy of violence, which of course covers the ANC's continued support for armed struggle, of which we strongly disapprove. The principle of a gradual relaxation of sanctions, for which we have been pressing for months, was accepted and is reflected in the statement. But the Council was unable to agree to make a start now. We shall look at this again under the Italian presidency, in the light of further progress in South Africa. In practice, several countries have already begun to lift various measures. I am sure that that will continue.
Finally, the Council agreed a statement utterly condemning terrorism and expressing sympathy for the victims of the terrorist bombing of the Carlton club. I am sure that the House will be grateful for the sympathy and support shown by our partners.
It was a useful Council—no dramatic decisions, but steady progress in several important areas. That is how it should be.

Mr. Neil Kinnock: I welcome the statements made by the Council of Ministers on the environment, terrorism, drugs and organised crime, and nuclear non-proliferation. The whole House will particularly share the revulsion expressed by the Heads of Government at recent manifestations of anti-semitism and racism. All in this Parliament will agree that the crimes of desecration and race hatred deserve strong condemnation and severe punishment.
All Opposition Members welcome the Council's further unanimous endorsement of the social charter. We all support the extension of the mandate of Mr. Delors as President of the Commission and we all derive satisfaction from the fact that it was our Prime Minister who seconded the nomination of notre frère Jacques.
We welcome the decision of the meeting to provide both short-term credits and long-term support for structural reform in the Soviet Union, and we congratulate the Prime Minister on reversing her short-sighted attitudes on that matter.
Will the Prime Minister take this opportunity to state exactly where her Government stand on European monetary union? Is she aware that last Tuesday the deputy Prime Minister described the Chancellor's proposals for a hard ecu as being "perfectly capable" of leading to a single European currency? The Governor of the Bank of England has described the Chancellor's proposals as a "very useful step" to a single European currency. The


Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary obviously feel the same. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister says that it must not come in her lifetime and yet, on Tuesday in Dublin, she signed up to specific commitments in a specific timetable. How long does the Prime Minister hope to keep up this two-faced performance, especially when it confuses her hon. Friends and does not even impress the neighbours?
In Dublin, the Council of Ministers, in the words of the communiqué,
agreed to intensify the process … of European Union" in economic, monetary and political terms, and to secure "ratification by the end of 1992.
The Prime Minister signed up for all of that, but still she says it is others who are coming into step with us. Is the Prime Minister really trying to tell us that all along she has secretly been in favour of integration on that scale, or is the truth that at last the modern realities of the Community are beginning to impress themselves, even on the lady of Bruges?
Does the Prime Minister accept that it is obvious that, in this European Community of nations, distinctions of national identity and national institutions are of great and enduring value? Does she also realise that the influence of Britain is not advanced, and its interests are not served, by her tinpot, tin drum nationalism?

The Prime Minister: I shall try to answer some of the points raised by the right hon. Gentleman. I noticed what he said about the programme for social action. From what he said, it seems that he thinks it is quite right that the Commission should interfere with rules related to part-time work and overnight work in the United Kingdom, and that he would give the Commission that and such other piffling little powers in the name of subsidiarity. It is for us to decide those things. They come under the doctrine of subsidiarity, which the Commission is always talking about and never honouring.
With regard to giving help to the USSR, I remind the right hon. Gentleman, as I reminded colleagues at Dublin, that there is already in this country a line of credit of £800 million under the Export Credits Guarantee Department which has not yet been drawn upon. Therefore, we do not need any lectures from anyone about making loans available to the Soviet Union. I think that the Soviets are wise to consider before drawing them down. They know full well that what they spend the money on needs to have an effect on their whole future and their capital future. If they spent the money on consumer goods, it would tie a great big debt around their neck and not do them any long-term good. On this matter they are rather wiser than the right hon. Gentleman.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the single currency. He should read paragraph 26 of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor's speech. [Interruption.] I am about to read it out. Speaking about his proposals, my right hon. Friend said:
They are practical, they are progressive, they offer choice, not prescription. They evolve naturally from stage 1 and have the potential to evolve further. In time the ecu would be more widely used. It would become a common currency for Europe. In the very long term, if peoples and governments so choose it could develop into a single currency, but that is a decision we should not take now for we cannot yet foresee what the size and circumstances of the new Europe would be.

I do not think that it could develop into a single currency without altering the European monetary fund, which my right hon. Friend also described in detail in his speech.
The right hon. Gentleman then suggested that we had signed up for something merely because we signed a procedural motion at an intergovernmental conference. Perhaps he does not realise that that decision can be taken by a plain, straightforward, simple majority, but that any conclusions reached by the conference must be straightforward unanimity. There is no possibility of not having one because the majority wanted one. We shall reserve our detailed arguments for the intergovernmental conference.
The right hon. Gentleman says that we signed up to economic and monetary union. We signed up to that before we joined, because it was part of the terms agreed in 1972 before we joined the Community, and it was still incorporated in those terms after the Prime Minister at the time, now the noble Lord Callaghan of Cardiff, had completed his renegotiation.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. As the House is aware, there is a business statement after this and also a statement on British Aerospace. We then have a debate on the scrutiny of European legislation for which the House has been waiting for a long time. I propose to allow questions to the Prime Minister to continue until 4.20, and then we must move to the other statements.

Mr. David Howell: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that she will not be deterred from her thoroughly sensible proposals for a common currency for Europe and a European monetary fund? They hold out far more promise for the future than a single centralised European bank which would be impossible to operate in the European monetary system. In view of the likely failure of the Uruguay round, can my right hon. Friend say whether there were any firm proposals at Dublin for developing an alternative world trade organisation or expanding the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development into an Atlantic-wide free trade and investment area?

The Prime Minister: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I agree that the proposals that have been put forward by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer are substantial and right, in that they still leave choice in people's hands as to whether they should go for a common currency or continue to deal only in their own. Those proposals are much more substantial than stage 2 of Delors and quite different.
Many people would have difficulty with locked currencies, as we all had difficulty with Bretton Woods, and many would have difficulty going to Delors stage 3. Not only this Parliament but others could not do it without enormous subventions from other members of the Community. We would not be prepared to do that. The Chancellor's proposal is much more substantial than the present stage 2, and we say that it is the next stage on which everyone could agree. It is not for us to say what may happen in 10 or 20 years because we do not know the circumstances that will pertain then. It would be an effective second stage.
My right hon. Friend mentioned the Uruguay round. As he knows, the agriculture problems present difficulties. Some other Members of the Community are much more


rigid on those than we would be, and we have made proposals for determining the different level of subsidy in the United States, the Community and Japan through some kind of producer subsidy equivalent. I agree that that will be the most difficult part of the Uruguay round. There is a tendency in some respects for members of the Community to be more protectionist than we are—for example, Germany, with its stance on lorries and its discriminatory taxes. We have not prepared an alternative mode of negotiation. We must strain to make the Uruguay round successful and to increase world trade.

Mr. Paddy Ashdown: I listened carefully to the Prime Minister's answer a moment ago on economic and monetary union. We all know that the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that his system left open the option of moving towards a single European currency, but that runs counter to the implication of the Prime Minister's comments after the Dublin summit and to her specific answer to my question last week. Therefore, will she how answer unequivocally the question which she has so far dodged: will Britain join a single European currency under her leadership—yes, no or maybe?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman cannot have listened to the paragraph of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor's speech that I read out, which says clearly that that is not a decision that we should take now. It could not have come from the structure of the European monetary fund set out in my right hon. Friend's speech. If the right hon. Gentleman has read that, he will know full well that the ecu would be issued as a currency only against other currencies placed with that board. That would ensure that it was non-inflationary. It could not be done under that structure. Why do we not get on with things on which we can all agree? It would give those who wish to use a common currency the right to do so. Why does the right hon. Gentleman arrogate to himself decisions that are for future generations in the House to take?

Mr. Hugh Dykes: I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement today and for her robust and strong position at the Dublin summit which not only represented and safeguarded Britain's genuine interests but took us further along the road to European monetary union and the formation of political union in whatever form the member states may decide. Does she agree that it is highly likely that the market place pressures will, in reality, produce a common and/or single currency in due course because the market pressures will be great both from institutions and companies, and from consumers, as the ecu develops?

The Prime Minister: Our proposals would lead to a common currency which people could choose to use more or less as they wished, or they could continue to use their own currency. I do not believe that that formula could develop into a single currency. The Delors formula for a single currency involves a board of 12 bank governors with powers over monetary policy and some powers over budgetary policy. Once we surrendered all our powers over monetary and budgetary policy, we would not have a great deal of sovereignty left, and I do not believe that that would be acceptable to the House. Those who advocate a single currency would do well to remember that, because they would be voting to diminish fundamentally the powers of the House—powers which it is for us to uphold.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: What did the discussion on international terrorism add up to in practice? Did it deal with the vexed problem of extradition?

The Prime Minister: We did not go further on extradition. As I think the right hon. Gentleman will be aware, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Foreign Minister of the Republic of Ireland are studying the cases of extradition which have been heard recently to see whether they add up to what we thought the law on extradition meant. There was some discussion during one meal and particularly at a press conference. It is important that we have extradition so that people can stand trial in the country where the crime was committed. Just as it is important that no one who is innocent should be found guilty, it is equally important that those who are guilty should be found guilty, properly and duly in the courts of law.

Mr. William Cash: My right hon. Friend is to be congratulated on the immense progress that she has made in continuing to stand up for democracy and accountability, not only in this Parliament but in Europe. The simple questions that arise are: who is to control our economy, and are we to retain the authority of the House on vital public expenditure and taxation matters? Will she accept the congratulations of Conservative Members on her achievement in maintaining the authority of this place?

The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend that the argument about accountability makes more and more headway every time that we raise it. Many people are very concerned that the Delors stages 2 and 3 do not properly address that question. As others look more carefully into stages 2 and 3, they have very different objectives from that of the deutschmark. It is clear that the objective of some of them is not to maintain the value of the currency and protect it from inflation but to put growth before that, which could possibly undermine the value of a currency. Those differences are coming out more and more. I described what my hon. Friend put forward. The rest of our colleagues were very interested, and I believe that his proposal will be studied very carefully.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: In a previous answer the Prime Minister said that she believes that the commitment to economic and monetary union stems from 1972. Does she agree that the then Government took us into the EEC without public mandate, and that she headed a Government who, without public mandate, signed the Single European Act, which for the first time made it possible for the laws of this country to be determined against the wishes of the public, Parliament or the Government? As to political union, has not the Prime Minister now agreed to what she calls a procedural motion without resolution of the House? How does she reconcile such conduct with the defence of the British constitution and parliamentary democracy in the United Kingdom?

The Prime Minister: As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Single European Act extended the qualified majority—it did not invent it—for the purpose of achieving the internal market under article 100A, and specifically delineated areas that would still require unanimous voting. We feel sometimes that those areas are being undermined by


decisions of the Commission. I do not believe that they have yet been to the courts. It is vital that, in the areas where the unanimous vote is retained, it is clearly upheld.
As for economic and monetary union, it was referred to—as the hon. Gentleman knows that it was in 1972—in the preamble to the Single European Act. In one of the crossheadings, it was defined as economic and monetary co-operation. That is still how I prefer to define it. I believe that that is the right definition.

Mr. Christopher Gill: What are the prospects of convincing our European partners that, if we are to help eastern Europe to create a free market economy, it is better to encourage the private sector to invest in eastern Europe rather than squander taxpayers' money on centralist schemes of dubious economic benefit?

The Prime Minister: I wholly agree with my hon. Friend. It is much better for the private sector to invest. It would send in good management to show how the private sector operates, which is very much needed. All the people from eastern Europe who come to see us—yesterday I saw Mr. de Maizire from East Germany, and we have also had visitors from Hungary and Czechoslovakia—are anxious to pursue privatisation. They know full well that it will produce a much more prosperous standard of living for their people than the totally centrally controlled nationalisation under which they have lived to this day.

Mr. John D. Taylor: The Prime Minister confirmed in her statement that she has committed the Government to intergovernmental conferences in December on economic, monetary and political union. Will the Prime Minister confirm that she has committed herself to a process that will inevitably lead to a federal Europe, a single currency and a central bank, and to the eventual diminution of the sovereignty of this nation? If she accepts that, would it not be better to tell the British public the truth now rather than to disguise it until after the next general election?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman is giving a false impression. At any time in one of the main councils of the Community, a vote could be put to the 12 present on whether there should be an intergovernmental conference. That vote is decided by a simple majority: seven votes to five would get an intergovernmental conference. That is normal procedure. It was quite clear that there were few people around the table against an intergovernmental conference, and there is no reason why we should not be prepared to go into one about political union, because we have many proposals to put forward about the Commission's accountability for the moneys that it uses, and many other proposals to make the Commission and the other institutions work much better. We wanted a conference so that we could put our proposals forward.
It has been made clear at all times that this House would not accept a single European currency on the Delors plan because that would mean yielding up monetary and fiscal sovereignty; so we would not agree to Delors stage 3, and we have not agreed to stage 2. We were in favour of Delors stage 1, because we were already set on that course before he came out with stages 2 and 3.

Mr. Robert Rhodes James: Have discussions been held about the location of the European environmental agency? Is my right hon. Friend aware that I am enthusiastic that it should be in Cambridge, which is a suitable place, and I hope that the Government are pressing for that.

The Prime Minister: There were discussions about the sites of European institutions. As my hon. Friend is aware, whenever we discuss that, the question whether the Parliament should continue to meet in Strasbourg, Brussels and Luxembourg comes up. Those are some of the liveliest debates that we ever have in the Community. Countries which have institutions within their borders wish to keep precisely what they have and do not want change. Unless they are assured of that, they will not agree about where the environmental institution and the trade-mark centre should go. So we got no further. That has happened several times. The matter has been put to the next presidency—which will be Italian. Having got the European bank for reconstruction and development, there is no possibility of our getting the centre for environmental studies.

Mr. Peter Shore: Is it not clear, whatever else happened in Dublin, that the Prime Minister has not been able to stem, let alone halt, the Gadarene rush towards economic, monetary and political union in Europe; and that once the intergovernmental conferences take place there is a great danger that this country will be sucked into major decisions against our interests and, as I understand it, against the wishes of the Prime Minister? As we will probably stand alone and say that we disagree with the rest of the EC at the end of that process, will she now make clear to the country—this terribly ill-informed country, with ill-informed media—the dangers and difficulties to the British economy, to jobs and industry and to the Westminster Parliament of being locked into permanently fixed exchange rates in the sort of system that Delors has wished upon us?

The Prime Minister: I must congratulate the right hon. Gentleman; he is beginning to sound more and more like me. I have made that speech several times, and consistently. I am against locked currencies. We have lived with locked currencies and they collapsed. I am against a single currency, and I do not believe that we shall be sucked in—for one good reason: if we were to come to this Parliament with a single currency which deprived the House of its customary authority, I do not believe that it would go through the House. I thoroughly agree with the right hon. Gentleman and with his conclusion.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: Did the Prime Minister have the opportunity to raise the question of interim relief, decided by the European Court this week? Has not that matter taken on a new urgency in view of the information from the Home Office this morning that the agents for the German state lottery are taking action in the United Kingdom courts in relation to the fact that the distribution of German lottery tickets, is in contravention of the European Court under the Lotteries and Amusements Act 1976? Would it not be a bit ridiculous if people in Britain were forced to subsidise the German health service by buying German lottery tickets, when lottery tickets are illegal under a law passed unanimously by the House?

The Prime Minister: We did not raise that particular matter. As my hon. Friend knows, we have dealt with it at Question Time, pointing out that our courts had been given the power to override our law in favour of Community law, although to what extent they did so was still a matter for the decision of our courts. We did not go into the matter further at the Council. I understand that the matter that my hon. Friend has raised is at present before the courts, and they will therefore decide it in the first instance.

Mr. Ernie Ross: On the declaration on the middle east, the whole House will welcome the Government's affirmation of the untenability of the status quo in the occupied territories and the Government's explicit reference to the obligations on all state parties to the Geneva convention to show respect for that convention. We also welcome the further call for action to ensure that protection. Does the Prime Minister agree that that statement breaks new ground and will give cause for hope that Britain and its European partners are prepared to act to protect the basic human rights of Palestinians on the west bank and in Gaza pending the resumption of a meaningful peace process?

The Prime Minister: I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman's underlying view. It is worrying that we have no negotiations going and seem to have little prospect of negotiations. It is vital that we get negotiations going that respect Israel's right to exist and also respect and uphold the decision of the Palestine Liberation Organisation to recognise article 242, to recognise Israel's right to exist and also to disapprove of violence as a means of pursuing its objectives. I know that there is some ambivalence on that last point, particularly with regard to activities in the occupied territories.
I share the hon. Gentleman's view that it is important for us, both in the Community and with the United States, which can perhaps bring more pressure to bear on Israel than any other country, to try to get negotiations going in spite of all the difficulties. Otherwise we may lose some of the advances that have been made. We disapprove of terrorism or violence, by the PLO or any other organisation, and that makes it more important that, where there are legitimate grievances, they should be addressed by negotiations.

Sir Peter Hordern: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her evolutionary approach to a European common currency. As the European monetary fund is to be responsible for monetary policy, in the sense that it will determine interest rates, will my right hon. Friend tell us to whom the European monetary fund will be responsible?

The Prime Minister: It will be responsible for interest rates only on the ecu, which is currency board issued. Our interest rates and our own currency are, and will continue to be, matters for us. The fund would be responsible for the deposits made with it and the amounts that it lent out for common currency. We shall still be responsible for our own.

Mr. Jack Ashley: Is the Prime Minister aware that her insistence on the restructuring, of the Soviet Union economy sounds reasonable but could be very dangerous? The Soviet leaders are already aware of the need for restructuring, and any imposition of sudden changes on their crumbling economy could put it in a state

of chaos and collapse. By all means let us give economic aid and expertise, but the best people to decide the pace of change in the Soviet Union are Soviet leaders, not western leaders.

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman will realise that the very difficult circumstances which the Soviet Union faces now are a result of 70 years of central power and control, of the nationalisation of practically every decision and of no responsibility or initiative among its people. That is what has virtually brought about the collapse of the standard of living about which the right hon. Gentleman speaks.
The right hon. Gentleman will recall that when we set out to help Poland and Hungary—and now others—we insisted that the International Monetary Fund had a look at their economies and that they took advice to change their economic direction and to have more privatisation and more private enterprise against a proper framework of regulation and law. We did not give the aid until we were certain that that change had been approved, and therefore had some chance of getting under way. The change does not have to be totally complete—that would not be possible or reasonable—but those countries must have got the main change under way.
There are one or two joint ventures and we have some. They do not always work because the raw materials and the semi-fabricated goods which should come to the factory which is part of a joint venture—often from the Soviet side—do not arrive. I think that the best venture in the Soviet Union is probably McDonald's beefburgers, because it has its own farms, its own lorries and the biggest queue. I am sure that it is right to get an economic structural change going.

Sir John Wheeler: I am confident that my right hon. Friend will welcome the progress towards improved co-operation to suppress serious crime and international terrorism. Does she agree that the most important way to achieve that is to improve the intelligence arrangements and gathering systems? Can she comment on whether the German Government are willing to amend their constitution to allow their citizens to be subject to extradition to other EC countries to stand trial there?

The Prime Minister: We did not discuss that particular point. However, we did discuss the importance of intelligence among all European countries—even across the European divide—in tracking down criminals, especially those peddling drugs. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that to get intelligence in time—and to take action on it—is one of the most important factors.

Mr Anthony Coombs: While suporting the vigorous programme of aid and assistance by the EEC to newly democratic eastern European countries, does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be inappropriate—indeed wasteful—to pour a large amount of aid into the Soviet Union until it has not only formed a market economy but has taken a greater stride towards a truly pluralist democracy and shown more sensitivity to the needs of its national minorities in, for example, the Baltic states?

The Prime Minister: The Soviet Union must sort out the powers that belong to central Government and the powers that belong to the separate republics, bearing in


mind the fact that some of the separate republics are very large and that they are now taking powers unto themselves because they are varied and they dislike some of the decisions of the central authority.
It is important that we get the change with regard to aid. It has been suggested that we put up quite a lot of loan money for the Soviet Union to buy consumer goods to put on the shelves. In my view, that would do no one any good, least of all the Soviet Union. The sum mentioned was $15 billion, which would be equivalent to about $2.5 billion coming to Britain. The idea that that would solve all the problems is ridiculous. It would make them worse, because people would buy the goods quickly. The Soviet people would then be left with a large amount of debt hanging round their necks. Their last position would be worse than their first.

Mr. Tony Benn: Is the Prime Minister aware that, while there is widespread feeling that harmonisation between fully self-governing countries is desirable in western Europe, eastern Europe and more generally, there is absolutely no electoral mandate for economic, monetary and political union, which is to be discussed further at the special meeting later this year? There is little public understanding of it, no public support for it and, above all, we have no authority from the voters to move in a direction which would take away power not from the House but from the people who send us here. Sovereignty belongs not to the House of Commons but to those who put us here and can remove us, and the continued operation of the Crown prerogative, which is the only power that the Prime Minister has to agree to any of those things has already rendered the House virtually impotent in defence of the rights of those who sent us here.
In the light of what is happening worldwide—in Quebec and elsewhere—is the right hon. Lady not aware that there is no longer that passion for increasingly large super-power units, whether in Moscow, Brussels or anywhere else, and it is time that she stopped beating the nationalist drum and taking us further into an impasse which, when the people discover it, will lead to great public anger which could undermine confidence in parliamentary democracy?

The Prime Minister: I hardly thought the day would come when I would agree with a good deal of what the right hon. Gentleman says—and I am sure that he is as surprised as I am—but I do not agree with all of it, which perhaps is the saving grace. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman agrees with increased co-operation between democracies for defence, security, trade and many matters. Co-operation is freely given by nation states, each answerable to its own Parliament—with 12 nation states sitting round the table, we are each answerable to our own Parliament.
I agree with step-by-step, steady, increasing co-operation in those matters on which it is wise to co-operate. I do not agree with giving up our sovereignty and going into anything like a federation of European states. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that it is evident across eastern Europe that, whereas people thought that they could suppress national identity by a political creed, they have discovered that they cannot

suppress it. I would go further and say that one should not suppress it. We can co-operate as nations because we wish to co-operate, and that is the way we shall do it.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: I welcome the Prime Minister's robust statement on aid to the Soviet Union. We are talking about taxpayers' money and any money that is allocated must have strings attached in terms of economic reconstruction. However, if she has trouble selling the principle of a two-tier currency system, let me put a suggestion to her. She should give Members of Parliament two options: they can be paid in ecu, or they can be paid in sterling. I am sure that many of my hon. Friends who have been pro-European since the early 1970s would opt for ecu, but I am sure that the anti-European backwoodsmen would have to consider their position very rapidly.

The Prime Minister: I rather agree with the hon. Gentleman on his last point, but at the moment the ecu is not a currency; it is a measure of the value of a basket of currencies. Under the European monetary fund and the system proposed by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, it could issue as a hard ecu only against other European currencies so we would not get inflation. It might be as well to allow people that choice. The hon. Gentleman has made his judgment as to how they would use it, but there is no reason why they should not make that choice.
I am very grateful for what the hon. Gentleman said about aid to the Soviet Union. We were faced with a sudden proposition, a demand for about $15 billion-worth of aid without any papers whatsoever before us, and I was bound to say that that is not the way we do business.

Sir Ian Lloyd: As a member of the small but diminishing band that has consistently opposed sanctions for the best part of 25 years, may I congratulate the Prime Minister on her success in persuading some of her colleagues to abandon that bandwagon, on which the four horsemen of the apocalypse are teamed with the World Council of Churches and Mr. Mandela.
On the more fundamental point of political union, may I test the proposition that my right hon. Friend advanced—that European political institutions will be given power and sovereignty only when national political institutions cannot do the job? She will be aware that a Committee of Parliament pointed out that national political institutions simply no longer could deal with air traffic control. Was that discussed in Dublin and, if so, with what result?

The Prime Minister: Air traffic control was not discussed, but we obviously need maximum co-operation right across Europe. It would be difficult if there were one system right across Europe, because a few people going on strike could place the rest of the system in difficulty. We need much more co-operation between air traffic controllers. As my hon. Friend knows, we are installing the latest computers for our system.
With regard to sanctions, the countries are coming our way, and not only in the communiqué. Italy has lifted her ban on investment in South Africa—a very well-judged decision—Spain has set up a new cargo airline for delivering goods to South Africa, and Denmark has returned her ambassador to South Africa. Although they are not formally agreeing to disband some of the few remaining sanctions, they are nevertheless having increasing contact with South Africa, which is the right


decision. It helps President de Klerk and all those in South Africa to look forward to a higher standard of living in a full non-racial democracy.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I am sorry that it has not been possible to call all hon. Members. Today, I have given some precedence to those who were not called on 1 May and on 12 June.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: No, you have not.

Mr. Speaker: I have not been able to get them all in, but I shall keep a list and see what I can do next time.

Business of the House

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Sir Geoffrey Howe): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the business for next week.

MONDAY 2 JULY—Estimates day (1st Allotted Day, 2nd part). There will be a debate on assistance to eastern Europe. Details of the estimates concerned and the relevant Select Committee report will be given in the Official Report.

Ways and Means resolution relating to the Finance Bill.

The Chairman of Ways and Means has named opposed private business for consideration at seven o'clock.

TUESDAY 3 JULY—Opposition day (17th Allotted Day). Until about seven o'clock there will be a debate entitled "Crisis in our Schools". Afterwards there will be a debate on Housing. Both debates arise on Opposition motions.

Motion on the Education (Student Loans) Regulations.

WEDNESDAY 4 JULY—There will be a debate on the Arts and Heritage on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.

THURSDAY 5 JULY—Motion on the Northern Ireland Act 1974 (Interim Period Extension) Order.

FRIDAY 6 JULY—Private Members' Bills.

MONDAY 9 JULY—Consideration of any Lords amendments which may be received to the Social Security Bill.

Relevant document, Monday 2 July: Third Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee of Session 1989–90 on FCO/ODA Expenditure 1990–91 (House of Commons Paper No. 233).

Dr. John Cunningham: May I warmly thank the Leader of the House for providing time for a debate on the arts and heritage—a debate for which we have been asking for some time? I express my gratitude to the Leader of the House for announcing that the debate will take place.
Will the Leader of the House reconsider the position of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Bill? It is obvious that there will be insufficient time to consider it in this Session unless it is drastically altered. I concede that discussion of it to date has shown that there may be room for major changes, but, given the shortage of time and the pressure for major change, would it not be far more sensible to withdraw the Bill, have it rewritten and introduced again in the next Session, when there would be a large measure of agreement not only about its contents but about its rate of progress through the House?
A number of local authorities had lawfully to fix their poll taxes in April. They have subsequently been poll tax-capped by the Government and will retrospectively have to make major changes to their budgets and therefore to their expenditure and their ability to deliver services to many hundreds of thousands of people. Why have we still not had any indication of when the Government intend to bring those poll tax capping orders to the House for debate? I emphasise to the Leader of the House that the Opposition believe that it is very important that adequate time be given to debate orders that affect 20 local authorities.
I thank the Leader of the House for trying to find proper accommodation for Mr. Nelson Mandela to


address hon. Members when he comes here next week. I know that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has tried, but I would like to ask him to try again, to secure suitable accommodation for Mr. Mandela's address. When I was in the United States, I saw Mr. Mandela address the Senate and the House of Representatives jointly on the floor of the Congress. I am not suggesting that Mr. Mandela should be invited into this Chamber—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"]—but will the Leader of the House consider whether Mr. Mandela should be invited to address us in the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords? That would be an appropriate and fitting setting for an historic occasion at which many hon. Members on both sides of the House—this is not a party political point—and other people in Parliament would wish to be present. Will the Leader of the House consider that again?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's welcome for my announcement of the debate on Wednesday, in which my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Arts will have a chance to give an account of his substantial achievements.
I listened yet again to what the hon. Gentleman said about the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Bill. It is currently making progress in Standing Committee. It received a Second Reading with a substantial Government majority, and I believe that it should continue to make progress in Committee.
The hon. Gentleman was right to observe that I made no announcement about the charge-capping orders today. As I have said more than once, the question of a debate on the orders is best left to discussion through the usual channels.
I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman said about the endeavour to find a suitable place in which Mr. Nelson Mandela may be invited to address hon. Members of both Houses. However, I am afraid that I cannot accept his suggestions. As he knows, there is a great difference between the traditional availability of invitations to speak in the Royal Gallery, which are seldom extended, and invitations to speak to both Houses of Congress in the Senate. A comparison between the two is not appropriate.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I ask hon. Members to confine themselves to one question about the business for next week. I would like to call on the next statement at 4.50 pm.

Mr. Harry Greenway: I want to raise a matter that is important to Londoners. Miss Constance Scrafield, who was prosecuted for allegedly galloping in Richmond park, brought a petition to me on her horse this week asking for new regulations about cantering in royal parks in London. May we have a debate on that subject so that people are not persecuted for allegedly galloping?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I have not received many representations on that point, but I shall give it the attention that it properly deserves.

Mr. James Wallace: One of the functions of this House is to monitor public expenditure. As a report of the Energy Select Committee published yesterday gave one of the most damning indictments of Ministers for a long time on the costs of nuclear power,

may we have a debate in Government time on that important issue? Sir William Wallace, who sought freedom from oppression for his people against alien oppression, spoke in Westminster Hall. Would not that be an appropriate place for a speech by Mr. Nelson Mandela?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman is entitled to make his view known on the second point, but I am not prepared to agree with him. On the Energy Select Committee report, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy has already replied clearly and vigorously to the comments made in that report, and that should be sufficient for the time being.

Mr. Roger Gale: In the light of the response of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food earlier on the export of live animals, the failure of the unelected European Commission to observe the wishes and recommendations of the Members of the European Parliament expressed in their submissions to the Council of Ministers and the strong feelings of the RSPCA, the British Veterinary Association and the all-party animal welfare group of the House on the export of live animals, will my right hon. and learned Friend find time for a debate in the House so that we can send a clear message to the Council of Ministers reflecting the feeling in the House?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am not sure that I can offer the prospect of an early debate on the matter. As my hon. Friend knows, unilateral action on the matter would not necessarily be compatible with the European Communities treaties. Certainly it will be one of our objectives to ensure the introduction in all member states of measures which would achieve higher standards of care than those which currently prevail.

Mr. Robin Corbett: Has the Leader of the House seen all-party early-day motion No. 1096?
[That this House notes that the drug Erythropoietin, EPO, that can greatly improve the lives of kidney patients may be denied to some of them because of financial pressures in the area in which they happen to live; and calls upon the Government to make a thorough assessment of the benefits of the drug and, if appropriate, to ensure that it is equally available to all kidney patients who would benefit from its use.]
Will he find time for an early debate on the denial of Government funds for the use of the drug?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The assessment of the benefits of EPO is a matter for the clinicians involved. The current way forward is for each region to assess patients' requirements for the drug and make appropriate plans to ensure that those needs are met. Our reforms of the national health service will make it easier for treatment to be made available in that way.

Sir Michael McNair-Wilson: During the debate on Northern Ireland on Thursday, will the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland give the House an update on his talks with political parties and in Dublin about future political initiatives in the Province?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I understand my hon. Friend's interest in that matter. The debate next Thursday will be extensive in terms of time. It would not be proper for me to anticipate what my right hon. Friend will say.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: My question is also on Thursday's business. Will there be a full answer on the letter that the Prime Minister received on 10 June from Mr. Colin Wallace which contained a document which may well have been a smear? The document was typed by Mr. Christopher Whitehead, currently head of public relations for the prison service. It linked Charles Haughey with the IRA. May we have a full explanation of that letter of 10 June?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I cannot possibly answer that question. The fact that the hon. Gentleman has raised the matter on the Floor of the House today will undoubtedly be taken into account by those of my hon. Friends who speak in the debate.

Mr. Rupert Allason: My right hon. and learned Friend will know that on Monday night we had just three hours to debate the forthcoming police housing allowances and that many hon. Members failed to catch Mr. Speaker's eye. Many topics were discussed. Surely that demonstrates the need for a debate on the subject as soon as possible and, in particular, on some of the other topics raised, including the amalgamation of the police forces and the introduction of a national detective force. Those issues should be debated in the House because important decisions will soon be made that will affect every citizen in the country. It is important that we should debate the matter before the recess.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I know that the House debated the regulations on Monday night, and the debate ended in a substantial majority in support of the Government's proposals. However, that is no reason for me not to accept the proposition that I should recommend my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary to consider those topics.

Rev. Martin Smyth: The Lord President will know that I would welcome a statement next Thursday about setting up a Northern Ireland Select Committee. However, in view of the speculation that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland intends to make a definitive statement during the renewal debate, would it not be wiser to circulate a detailed document to the leaders of the parties with which he has been in consultation so that there could be a considered response rather than off-the-cuff remarks in such a debate?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The question of a Northern Ireland Select Committee is under consideration by the Select Committee on Procedure, and it can be raised in the course of next week's debate. It would not be right for me to try to inhibit the way in which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland approaches the important matters that he is discussing.

Mr. Speaker: I call Mr. Winnick.

Hon. Members: He is called every week.

Mr. David Winnick: Will the Leader of the House give further serious consideration to where Mr. Mandela will speak when he visits the House next week? Does he recognise that, when Mr. Mandela has visited Parliaments in Europe and elsewhere, he has been given every possible facility and hospitality, and that the Grand Committee Room is not an appropriate venue, whereas the Royal Gallery is? Why on earth are the Government

adopting an attitude that must be regarded as a snub to one of the most distinguished and heroic figures in southern Africa, who has spent more than 25 years in prison for fighting for the liberation of his country?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I do not mean to say anything that does not accord proper respect to Mr. Nelson Mandela, his achievements or his aspirations, but the fact must be faced that many Heads of State and Governments would have sought to address both Houses in the Royal Gallery, and only a small number of such people have ever been invited to speak there.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. May I say to the whole House—and not to any hon. Member in particular—that those who are called last at business questions one week are always called first the next week?

Mr. Stuart Bell: I refer the Lord President to his answer to me last week in relation to the Government's proposed changes in private Bill procedure. He was kind enough to say that he has published a consultation document—I am not entirely sure whether it was a Green Paper, a White Paper, a pink paper or a peach paper. Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that three private Bills of a political nature are before the House at the moment—the Associated British Ports Bill, the Tees and Hartlepool Port Authority Bill and the Clyde Port Authority Bill? Would it not be appropriate, given the Government's intention to change the law in relation to private Bills and how they are operated in the House, to have an early debate on the subject so that the entire House can comment on those proposals?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The whole House is invited to comment on the proposals: that is precisely why the consultation document has been published. I shall look forward to reading representations and observations from any hon. Member who wishes to let me have them.

Mr. Bob Cryer: May I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to early-day motion 1152, on the destruction of the ozone layer?
[That this House, in view of the overwhelming scientific evidence of increasing ozone depletion and the unforeseeable consequences for the health of the planet and all life on it, urges the Government, at the environmental conference in London from 27th–29th June on the 1987 Montreal Protocol, to support a total phase-out of all ozone destroying compounds in the immediate future.]
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman assure the House that there will be a statement next week by the Secretary of State for the Environment, so that hon. Members can find out what he has been doing, and whether he has been pressing for the rapid phasing out of all substances that damage the ozone layer, especially in view of the scientific evidence that has been produced to show greater destruction and damage than was previously thought to exist? The Government's phasing-out date—the year 2000—simply is not adequate. We need more action, and a report from the Secretary of State to demonstrate that he has undertaken some action.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I expect that the House will appreciate that the Government are indeed committed to the ultimate phasing out of ozone-depleting substances at the fastest possible speed that can be agreed globally.


During the renegotiation of the Montreal protocol at the second meeting, the European Community made proposals for the control of CFCs that are tougher than those of any other country. I shall draw my right hon. Friend's attention to the suggestion that he should make a statement on the outcome of those proceedings, but obviously I cannot commit him.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Has the Leader of the House seen early-day motion 1200?
[That this House expresses its deep disquiet that 29 surviving former Labour Lambeth councillors, who have already been disqualified for five years and who have already paid over £300,000 in surcharge and costs, have again been surcharged for £212,726 and are sought to be disqualified for a further five years; deplores an unprecedented double penalty imposed for the same conduct which was penalised five years ago; and calls for the immediate remission of these further penalties and a reform of the Law which discriminates against councillors as compared with other public representatives and infringes the civil liberties of those who seek election.]
It has been tabled today and it concerns Lambeth councillors and the second surcharge and disqualification from office imposed on them. Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that there should be a report or a debate on this matter because Lambeth councillors have already been surcharged £300,000 and been subject to a five-year ban from public office? For the same offence, those councillors have been penalised another five years and subject to another £213,000 surcharge. That treatment must be contrasted with the way in which Lady Porter and her gang at the Tory Westminster council got away with the £5 million land deal fiddle, and with the £44 million of sweeteners from the Government in the Rover sale. Surely, if such treatment applies to one group of people, it should apply to another. The surcharge and the ban from public office placed on the Lambeth councillors should be lifted.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman does not find it easy to understand that there are due processes of law for consideration of all those matters. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry will be answering questions this afternoon about the response to the ruling of the European Commission in relation to Rover.
As for the Lambeth councillors, the surcharge and disqualification of councillors are matters for the auditor and the courts. I cannot make any comment in that particular case. The matter must be resolved through the courts, not through debate in this House.

Mr. Greville Janner: May we have an early debate on the latest example of the savaging of the national health service in Leicestershire—the closure of five wards, including children's wards, in the Leicester royal infirmary and the imminent redundancy of 167 people employed at the hospital announced by the management to the unions of that hospital yesterday? Is the Leader of the House aware that all hon. Members representing Leicestershire are deeply disturbed at the effect that the cuts in the health service are having and are likely to have on the health of our people? This matter should be debated in the House.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I have the impression that the topic has been drawn to my attention in a number of different ways on more than one occasion by hon. Members on both sides of the House. My response is the same as my previous ones: there has been a general increase in real terms in the resources available to the relevant Leicestershire health authority.

Mr. Eddie Loyden: I draw to the attention of the Leader of the House early-day motion 1196 on the loss of the MV Derbyshire.
[That this House calls on the Secretary of State for Transport, using powers vested in him by the Merchant Shipping Act 1970, to re-open the Wreck Commissioner's inquiry into the loss in 1980 of MV 'Derbyshire' to hear vital new scientific research on why that British-built, British-classed and British-flagged vessel sank without trace; notes that the research now with the Royal Institution of Naval Architects was carried out by the late Professor Richard Bishop, Vice Chancellor Brunel University and his partners, Professor Geraint Price and Pendari Temarel; further notes that their research indicates that the stresses in the hull of the 'Derbyshire' were grossly underestimated; believes this has important implications for the safety of other vessels still at sea; and notes the Wreck Commissioner's report into the loss of the 'Derbyshire' said last year that if the stresses in the hull of the ship had been underestimated, that could lead to different conclusions about the structural integrity of the ship.]
Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the new scientific evidence has been brought forward? Is he aware that there is widespread concern in the public domain about the fact that, 10 years ago, the families affected were treated shoddily? The Government have made no attempt to consider the new evidence recently produced.
Will the Leader of the House bring to the attention of the Secretary of State for Transport the need for a debate as soon as possible on the MV Derbyshire so that the House can hear the new available evidence?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I understand that the court of formal investigation into the loss of the MV Derbyshire reported as long ago as January 1989 and that no fresh evidence has been presented to the Department of Transport since then. My right hon. Friend will study the research material to which the hon. Gentleman referred once that becomes available to him. In the light of his examination, he will decide what steps may be appropriate.

Mr. Ron Brown: I am most grateful, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this place. You will recall that, last week, you said that those who were not called would be given the first opportunity to put questions to the Leader of the House today. Apparently, I am the last one on the Opposition Benches to put a question to the Leader of the House, and I accept that as some sort of compliment.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Please get on with the question—and good luck next week.

Mr. Brown: I may be short in stature, but I am not short in principle, I hope.
Will the Leader of the House arrange for a special debate next week on GEC-Ferranti of Edinburgh? Many of the employees are worried because they are losing their jobs. Such job losses may occur repeatedly throughout Britain, but it is important that we have a debate on this issue bearing in mind the fact that the favoured son of the


Tory party, Lord Weinstock, has taken over Ferranti. Will the Government be quiet, or will they speak up to allow the Opposition to have a go at them? The issue at stake is 550 jobs—550 families. The people of Scotland are concerned. If this place means anything and enables us to challenge issues, the Government should allow the debate to take place. I suspect, however, that the Leader of the House will make some excuse for not having a debate.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: As the hon. Gentleman knows, decisions of that nature are commercial ones for the company or companies concerned. No doubt my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland is aware of the issue to which he has drawn attention, but I cannot offer the prospect of a debate on it.

Mr. Nicholas Soames: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that important discussions are taking place in the Department of Trade and Industry on a new regime connected with export credits? Is he aware that that is of considerable interest to a number of industrial firms in my constituency? Will my right hon. and learned Friend assure the House that, before any final decision is taken on such important, critical matters, it will have an opportunity to debate them?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I understand the continuing importance of export credit guarantee schemes. I cannot offer the certain prospect of a debate on the matter, but if my hon. Friend seeks to represent the views of the firms in his constituency I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will take them into account.

Mr. Spencer Batiste: Bearing in mind today's remaining business, can my right hon. and learned Friend say whether he has had any suggestion from the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) that he will seek an opportunity to come to the House to apologise for the appalling, unfounded statements he has made to the effect that the Government illegally assisted British Aerospace through changes in the taxation system that would have been wholly outside the law of the land?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I have received no such representation.

British Aerospace

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Nicholas Ridley): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a statement on the decision reached yesterday by the European Commission following its review of the arrangements reached with British Aerospace regarding the sale of the Government shareholding in Rover Group.
The Government believe that, in the circumstances at the time, the additional concessions granted to British Aerospace were a necessary part of our agreement so that the privatisation of Rover Group could proceed. That deal brought considerable benefits: it freed the taxpayer from the contingent liability of the Varley-Marshall-Joseph assurances—that liability then amounted to £1·6 billion and was set to rise substantially over the corporate plan period. It ensured that Rover Group's needs would not in future require special Government aid, which had amounted to £3·5 billion while under public ownership. It safeguarded over 190,000 jobs, mostly in the west midlands, and it made a desirable contribution towards restructuring within the European motor industry.
Under BAe's ownership, the corporate plan is being fully implemented. Rover has already committed more than £500 million of new capital investment. The new model range is highly successful and the company has returned to profitability.
The Commission's principal decisions are as follows: that
£150 million represented a reasonable purchase price for the company";
that the Government should provide an undertaking that any arrangement between BAe and the Inland Revenue will not allow Rover Group to use more than the £500 million of trading tax losses specified in the sale agreement with BAe, and that those losses will remain within Rover Group—I am, of course, very happy to give an undertaking that the terms of the sale contract will be adhered to; that BAe should automatically be required to pay financial penalties if there is any change in control of Rover Group or its principal subsidiaries before July 1993—we shall be exploring precisely what this means with the Commission; that the grant of £1·5 million towards Rover Group's costs incurred in the acquisition, and the £9·5 million contribution towards BAe's costs in buying out the minority shareholders, should be repaid; and that the benefit to British Aerospace of deferring payment of the £150 million consideration for Rover Group should similarly be repaid.
In relation to this deferment, the Commission has concluded the BAe should be required to pay an amount of £33·4 million, calculated as the estimated gross interest saving to the company. Fairness suggests that any such benefit, and therefore any repayment, should be assessed net of tax, thus reflecting the true value of the deferment to the company. We estimate that the equivalent post-tax benefit would be some £22 million, a difference of £1·.4 million.
If the Commission's decision is on the basis of the gross interest saving, the net cost to BAe will depend on whether tax relief is available in respect of the repayment under normal United Kingdom tax law. The availability of tax


relief on the £33·4 million will need to be settled in due course between British Aerospace and the appropriate tax authorities, and perhaps ultimately in the courts.
The Commission also notes that expenditure of aid agreed in 1987 for restructuring of the Leyland Daf commercial vehicle operation has been slower than anticipated, and it suggests the possibility that up to £40 million of that may eventually need to be repaid. It acknowledges, however, that that figure is speculative and that the final outturn of expenditure will not be known until next year.
As the Commission's efforts to bring all state aids within the Community under control are beneficial for the development of the single market, the Government believe that it is important to support them. We have thus always acknowledged its ultimate right to reach its own judgment on the status of those additional arrangements in the context of the 1988 decision. We also accept that any benefit received by a company which the Commission properly decides is a state aid incompatible with the treaty should be repaid.
Equity suggests that the repayment should represent the net value of the benefit received by the company and not contain any unintended element of penalty. We are therefore concerned that the Commission has decided on £33.4 million in respect of the interest when the estimated benefit to British Aerospace is some £22 million, handing down a decision in gross terms without regard to whether or not the repayment will be allowable against tax under normal United Kingdom law.
We shall, accordingly, wish to give careful consideration to that aspect of the decsion and to any representations by BAe. Subject, however, to that, the Government, having carefully studied the arguments and to demonstrate our support for Community policy on state aids, have decided to accept the Commission's decision on repayment. We shall be discussing with the Commission and British Aerospace other detailed matters raised in the Commission decision. I am advised that British Aerospace will consider its position in the light of this statement and after studying the Commission decision in detail.

Mr. Gordon Brown: Given that the Minister said in his final few words that the Government will accept the Commission's general verdict to repay, will he now confirm that the Government wrongly gave away millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by deferring payment of the Rover purchase price, and that Parliament should have been but was never properly told?
Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that £9.5 million of British Aerospace's costs in acquiring Rover were wrongly paid by the Government and that the House was deliberately kept in the dark? Will he confirm that £1.5 million of Rover's costs for being acquired were wrongly paid by the Government and that Ministers delivered as a matter of policy not just to deceive the European Commission but to deceive Parliament as well? Will he also confirm that, far from the matter being closed, the European Commission has demanded a full report into tax concessions and tax allowances that might have resulted from a series of private meetings involving the Department of Trade and Industry, the Inland Revenue and British Aerospace? Will he now tell the House his estimate of the full value of those concessions?
Will the right hon. Gentleman now confirm not only that money was illegally paid but that, as the correspondence give to the House demonstrates, Ministers entered into an elaborate web of deception, even to the extent of a detailed discussion of the risks of being found out?
Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that Ministers actually considered how omissions in the national accounts might or might not be spotted, at least by some hon. Members, that they actually considered presenting late payments of cash just as if they had been made earlier and that there was within Government an ascending order of risk that secret concessions might be picked up by the European Commission?
In those circumstances, how can the right hon. Gentleman come to the House today and justify such abuses as what he calls necessary behaviour? Is he seriously telling us that, in other sales of public assets to private companies, the Government would offer similar hidden subsidies and mislead yet again?
Will the right hon. Gentleman now say what responsibility the Prime Minister, who says that she was consulted on the details of the deal, is prepared to shoulder for the errors of judgment and the deception? As for the Government's responsibility to Parliament, will the right hon. Gentleman say why, after nearly two years, after a critical National Audit Office report and after this damning new judgment from the European Commission, there has been as yet no full explanation of events, no apology, no admission of responsibility, no statement of who is to accept the blame and no new rules proposed to prevent similar abuses during the sale of public assets to private companies in future?
Does not this sorry and shameful tale of incompetence and deception—incompetence even in deception—now followed by this humiliating public rebuke in the front of the whole of Europe emphasise that the short-term obsession with privatisation at any price and at any cost overrode all considerations of the public interest, up to and including the good name and integrity of government?

Mr. Ridley: I answered the hon. Gentleman's first questions in my statement. He went on to suggest that the Government had misled Parliament. I repeat that each of those items was properly reported. The deferment of the consideration and the payment of the £1·5 million to Rover Group were reported in a revised summer supplementary estimate laid before Parliament on 14 July 1988, the day of the announcement. The payment of £9·5 million to BAe was reported in the 1989 Industry Act report. All the facts were made available to the National Audit Office at the outset of its investigations. So the hon. Gentleman is wrong about that.
The Government have agreed to accept the Commission's findings and to implement them. Is the Labour party now prepared to accept the Commission's findings and to stop making such charges as that the Government undervalued the Rover Group? As the Commission said:
£150 million represents a reasonable purchase price for the company.
So may we have a withdrawal of that accusation from the Labour party?
Secondly, the hon. Gentleman has written three times to me and once to the Prime Minister, and many times he has been to the media, and accused the Government of


separate tax concessions, hidden tax deals, fiddles on the tax side and secret meetings. That is not true. I want from him an apology and I want him to undertake to withdraw those allegations. He should either put up or shut up.

Mr. Kenneth Warren: Now that the Commission has given its decision, may we hope that both sides of the House will recognise the high value to this country of the Rover and British Aerospace enterprises? Will my right hon. Friend make available in the Library of the House in its entirety the correspondence that he has received from the Commission? May I ask him, not as Chairman of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry but as a Back Bencher, to give the House an assurance that there was never any intention by Her Majesty's Government to deceive Parliament?

Mr. Ridley: I agree with my hon. Friend about the great value to the country and taxpayer of Rover Group passing into the private sector and being owned by British Aerospace. Indeed, from what the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) said, it seems that he regrets that bitterly and wishes that it was still losing money in the public sector.
I have not yet formally received the full decision letter from the Commission. I have no doubt that it will appear in the newspaper columns even before I receive it, so it will become a public document. I have already answered the question about the presentation of these matters to Parliament, which should end that matter.

Mr. Alex Carlile: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether, prior to approving the British Aerospace-Rover deal, the Prime Minister and the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry were advised that some aspect of it were likely to be regarded as unlawful?

Mr. Ridley: My predecessor, Lord Young, obviously received legal advice from the Department. He alone must be responsible for the advice that he received. I have not seen his legal advice.

Mr. Roger King: Does my right hon. Friend accept that, in relation to some parts of the European Commission's findings, one could argue that a state company, if it wants to sell something, must first ensure that it owns it, and an element of purchasing the minority shareholding should not be construed as a form of state aid? Notwithstanding that, will my right hon. Friend reflect that the working people of the west midlands, so many of whose jobs depend on this business, have looked forward to, and worked to establish, a prosperous and profitable company? Had that business not been privatised—the negotiations were certainly tricky—with a British solution, we might be here now discussing a European Commission directive to prevent the state further subsidising a state business?

Hon. Members: Come on, Tricky Nick.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Ridley: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend's last point, because if the company had still been in public ownership, there is no doubt that there would have been a state aid ruling that we should desist from pumping

taxpayers' money into it. I would have been pleased to see it, but that is what we would have had. This is a different matter.
I think that my hon. Friend's first point is logically right. The owner of a company should be able to become a 100 per cent. shareholder. I cannot contest that the Commission has come to a different conclusion, which the Government have decided to accept.

Mr. David Nellist: Is the Secretary of State aware that, while he may be relieved that sticky fingers were rapped yesterday only to the tune of £40 million, most car workers in Coventry and the west midlands are still unsure whether, in the past few months, there has been Government incompetence or corruption? In any event, the case still stinks to high heaven. Some £3.5 billion of public, taxpayers' money has been put into, first, British Leyland and then Rover. Once that car company reached a position of stability, the people whose money was put into it should have had the return; the money should not have been given away to British Aerospace. That is what this is all about—we are talking about not just £40 million, but the fact that a public asset was given away to the Secretary of State's mates.

Mr. Ridley: Car workers in the west midlands and the hon. Gentleman's constituency will be only too grateful that they have good, secure jobs in an expanding, successful company, and are not at risk from a state aid directive stopping us pumping money into a bankrupt nationalised enterprise.

Sir Hal Miller: Will my right hon. Friend confirm the facts of the case, which are that Rover was successfully sold to a British company when there were no other applicants and the Opposition had objected to a previous suggestion that Ford and General Motors might take over responsibility for the company; the taxpayer was relieved of the burden of guarantees to £1.4 billion and of the necessity of undertaking an investment programme of £1 billion, which would now, no doubt, have had to be repaid; there was then a considerable risk that the two new models would not be the successes that they were; and there was a heavy, overhanging liability for the redundancy payments for the work force? Therefore, we should all be pleased that the matter is a success, instead of indulging in conspiracy theories, muckraking and the denigration of a successful British company and successful British workers.

Mr. Ridley: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I remind the House of the words of the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) on 4 May 1988, when he was the shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry:
If we are really concerned about the future of the Rover Group and volume car manufacturing in this country under British ownership and control … we need the commitment of an owner who is willing to make the long-term investment that is required. We need an appreciation by the owner of the long-term importance of the industry to the British economy. We need pride of ownership."—[Official Report, 5 May 1988; Vol. 132, c. 941.]
We have achieved that as a result of the BAe deal, but the Labour party is now carping, criticising and wishing it had never happened.

Mr. Alan Williams: Is not the crucial and central point of the decision that has been handed down that the Government behaved illegally? In so far as


they did so, why on earth has the Secretary of State come here today without having checked on the legal advice given to his predecessor? While we accept that he is not allowed to see advice given to a previous Government, surely if he is coming to answer questions in the House on illegal conduct by Her Majesty's Government, he should at least have checked the records to find out how the decision was arrived at.

Mr. Ridley: No such question arises. The Government have decided to accept the Commission's report for the reasons that I have given. There is no point in the right hon. Member trying to prove something of that sort. We ultimately made our decision in the way that I have described.

Mr. Paul Channon: Does my right hon. Friend agree that what really matters in this case is that we have a prosperous, efficient, car industry in this country in which people have good jobs? Does he agree that, in the past, the Opposition have sabotaged any effort made to try to put the company on a profitable footing? Does he also agree that the British taxpayer has poured billions of pounds into that company and was liable to pour in even more billions of pounds, and the solution that he and his predecessors adopted not only saved the taxpayer a great deal of money, but provided a prosperous car industry for this country in future?

Mr. Ridley: My right hon. Friend is absolutely right and I applaud his part in the final outcome when he had the job that I now hold. This is what the whole House said that it wanted in May 1988, but now that we have actually got it, the Opposition appear to have changed their mind and want to go back to the old bad days.

Mr. Doug Hoyle: Will the Secretary of State stop attempting to defend and whitewash the Government's actions in their attempts to deceive the House, the European Commission and the general public by hiding the sweeteners given to British Aerospace—efforts of which the Prime Minister was aware? Instead, will he thank and support the vigilance of the Comptroller and Auditor General in unearthing this deception? Will he take his responsibility for the setting up of the slush fund and resign, along with the Prime Minister?

Mr. Ridley: I assure the hon. Gentleman that to the last of my days I shall continue to defend the Government and attack the rabble on the Opposition Benches. In answer to the hon. Gentleman's second point, we made a full report to the Comptroller and Auditor General, which he passed on to the Public Accounts Committee. The House was fully informed because, from that process, publication was made—I am not saying by whom—which was the right way to carry out the procedure.

Mr. Michael Grylls: Does my right hon. Friend agree that most sensible people in the House and outside will observe that, after months of study by the Commission, there has been no criticism whatever of the price at which this company was sold to British Aerospace? Synthetic opposition is voiced by Labour Members simply because they cannot bear to see that the company has been successfully privatised and is

prospering. Jobs are very much safer and productivity has improved. It has become a highly profitable British-owned motor car firm, and we should be proud of that.

Mr. Ridley: The force of my hon. Friend's arguments has driven the Leader of the Opposition from the Chamber because he could not take any more. Opposition Members are looking as glum as can be, and the Leader of the Opposition, who should be leading from the front, is not about. My hon. Friend is right. Political point scoring is more important to the Labour party than the successful future of the Rover group.

Mr. Stan Crowther: It would be in everybody's interest for the Government to drop their policy of subterfuge and cover-up. How can the Secretary of State pretend that all the facts were made known at the time, when it is perfectly obvious that, if they had been fully reported to the House and the Commission there would have been no need for the second Commission inquiry or the second inquiry by the Select Committee on Trade and Industry which hopes to report shortly? How can he pretend that the facts were made known, when it is perfectly obvious that they were hidden?

Mr. Ridley: I resent the use of the word subterfuge. On behalf of the Government I have accepted the Commission's report. I have not heard the Opposition or the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) say that they accept it. The scandalous charges that he has been making should now be withdrawn.

Sir Anthony Grant: The Commission has quite clearly found that British Aerospace received no special tax treatment and that Rover Group was not overvalued. In view of that, will my right hon. Friend once again invite the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East to withdraw his wild and irresponsible remarks? If the hon. Gentleman is not big enough to do that, will my right hon. Friend put that crazy correspondence in the Library so that the House can judge the credibility of the Opposition's attack?

Mr. Ridley: My hon. Friend is right. I repeat the invitation to the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his allegations. I have already put in the Library all the correspondence with the Inland Revenue and the House has seen it. I shall certainly place in the Library my correspondence with the hon. Gentleman, and the House can judge him as well.

Mr. Stuart Bell: The Opposition are simply trying to hold the Government accountable. For once it would be nice for the Secretary of State to come to the House and accept responsibility for a Cabinet decision. Does he agree that the Commission, rather than the British Government, has had to defend the British taxpayer? According to the Secretary of State's own figures, £33·4 million, £9·5 million and £1·5 million have to be repaid. That is a total of £44·4 million. He says that the Government will implement the Commission's decision. When and how will they collect the money, and when will they stop wriggling on this specific matter?

Mr. Ridley: I am in the House accepting responsibility on behalf of the Government. We are discharging our obligation to tell the House what the Commission has decided and what the Government have decided to do in response. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that the taxpayer


is protected by this decision of the Commission, without paying any heed to the £3·5 billion of taxpayers' money which went down the drain before this deal was ever done, he has another think coming.

Dr. Keith Hampson: Does my right hon. Friend accept that two critical aspects of the matter have been ignored by the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East? First, two years ago under a different Commissioner, it was not at all clear that the deferment of the purchase price, which is by far the largest element in the extra package, would be categorised as state aid. Secondly, at the heart of the matter is the fact that in early July two years ago it was by no means certain that the British Aerospace board was united in wanting to take on this huge loss-making operation with staggering liabilities. Without the extra £30 million package British Aerospace would not have bought Rover and it would not now be British and as successful as it has become.

Mr. Ridley: I have accepted the Commission's decision about the nature of the benefit that arose from deferring the interest on the £150 million for 20 months. However, I question whether it is right that the benefit to British Aerospace of that deferment, which was about £22 million, should result in that company being asked to repay £33 million. That seems to be a point which we can legitimately raise. My hon. Friend is right when he says that there was considerable reluctance on the part of British Aerospace to proceed at all. The hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) said in the House that he thought that it was a rotten deal for British Aerospace shareholders, and many City commentators suggested at the time that the shares should be marked down.

Mr. Chris Mullin: Can the Secretary of State give the House a categorical assurance that neither these nor similar arrangements applied in any other privatisation deal?

Mr. Ridley: I cannot quite understand how the hon. Gentleman is saying that there is something here which is different in relation to any other privatisation. I think that each case has to be taken on its merits and I am very happy to defend this privatisation as one of the most successful launches of a new motor company that we have seen for a long time.

Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that one of the most important considerations in the Government's mind must have been the preservation of the sales network of Rover Group dealers in the United Kingdom and abroad? Is he aware that, when the Trade and Industry Committee looked at the collapse of the Rootes motor group, which was rescued by Chrysler, the evidence given by the dealers to the Committee was that the whole sales network was collapsing hour by hour because of the uncertainty? Does he agree that there was a severe risk to the whole future of the Rover group if the quickest possible reasonable sale had not been consummated?

Mr. Ridley: My hon. Friend is entirely right about that. It is crucial to the on-going success of a motor company for the dealer network to remain intact and loyal. The continued uncertainty, much of which was caused by the Opposition making a tremendous fuss about any possible

purchaser for Rover Group, had made the dealer network rather jittery. That was the reason for the urgency in July 1988.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: The Attorney-General has been sitting stony-faced throughout the statement. Will the Secretary of State confer with him and obtain confirmation that the Prime Minister and Lord Young were told that this deal was unlawful?

Mr. Ridley: I would never dream of accusing the hon. Gentleman of being stony-faced. My right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General is the soul of delightful company and wit—when he is not taking his responsibilities very seriously, as of course he is now. He is completely satisfied with my statement and what I have told the House, and I have nothing further to add about the legal advice received by my predecessor.

Mr. Tim Janman: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that Commissioner Millan, a former Labour Member, voted against the Commission's recommendation on the basis that he wanted its action to be even harsher? Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be outrageous if he did that in an attempt to gain party political advantage? Does he further agree that Commissioner Millan may well have been put up to it by the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East?

Mr. Ridley: I hope that the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East will respond to that point. We have had a remarkable silence from him about his rather unsavoury part in these affairs and I hope that he will respond to my hon. Friend. I think that it is true that the only Commissioner who voted against the recommendation in the hope of achieving a tougher settlement against British Aerospace was Commissioner Millan.

Mr. Bob Cryer: Is it not true that many people believe that the Secretary of State has got off extremely lightly with a helpful report from the former Tory Minister Leon Brittan, who was himself severely criticised by a Select Committee for his duplicity? Will the Secretary of State now confirm clearly that he, Lord Young and the Prime Minister received information that the rip-off of hundreds of millions of pounds from the taxpayer was illegal?

Mr. Ridley: The hon. Gentleman's last statement is absolutely untrue. I must rebut that entirely. The hon. Gentleman is quite wrong in his first point as well.

Mr. Charles Wardle: Is not the kernel of the matter the fact that the amount now demanded by the Commissioners confirms their judgment that the assets sold were not undervalued?

Mr. Ridley: Yes, that is an important point. It is not just that the Commissioners felt that they could not reopen the decision of Commissioner Sutherland; it was on the merits of the case as set out in their letter that they came to the conclusion that the valuation which my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Young accepted with British Aerospace at the time was correct. We are still looking for a withdrawal from the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East of his statement only eight days ago in the House to my hon. and learned Friend the Minister for Industry that there was a gross undervaluation. It is time that he withdrew that.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: If there was no deception, why does the letter that I have here, signed by Lord Young, show a deception in relation to repayment and notional interest rates saved? Is it fair that a company valued by Nikki Securities of Japan at £1,000 million today should have been sold for only £150 million a couple of years ago?

Mr. Ridley: The hon. Gentleman puts his own interpretation on things. I prefer to believe what the Commission said. It is probably more impartial and has more sense than the hon. Gentleman. I am happy to see what the Commission says about valuation and I, too, am prepared to accept that.

Several Hon. Members: rose—.

Mr. Speaker: Order. In view of the importance of the next debate, in which some hon. Members who are now rising are anxious to participate, I shall call three more Conservative Members and the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman and then we must move on.

Mr. Jonathan Aitken: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his relaxed demeanour in the face of this synthetic little storm in a Dunfermline teacup. It is now obvious that the Government took the right decision to stand by Rover and obtain a good deal for the British taxpayer and preserve jobs, and are also probably right reluctantly to abide by the Commission's ruling. But on that point does my right hon. Friend share my cynical view that the so-called level playing field in European competition rulings is full of political lumps, and that he might not have been asked to repay £40 million if Renault had not been asked to repay £1·2 billion some months ago, which it has not yet done?

Mr. Ridley: I agree with my hon. Friend about the Dunfermline teacup. We were promised a firebrand, an effective Opposition spokesman, in the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East, but I am afraid that he has proved a great disappointment. We wish that he could sometimes put some good points for us to answer. In fact, he sits on his bottom and does nothing most of the time.
On the serious point made by my hon. Friend, it is a little disturbing that there have been rumours in the newspapers of the matter being treated by the Commission as some sort of political punishment which is negotiable. My concept of state aid is that it should be a precise calculation and that that alone should be what it asks to be repaid.

Mr. Edward Leigh: Further to the question asked by the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), have not some people forgotten that at the time people said that the Varley-Marshall guarantees of more than £1·6 billion were an enormous albatross round the neck of Rover? Indeed, the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) asked the House whether it was true that institutional shareholders had already been telephoning to express their objections. People forget such things now. Will not most reasonable taxpayers come to the conclusion that they have had a

good deal? The Government have offloaded a loss-making, ramshackle organisation which was sending £1·6 billion down the pan and now have a profitable British company.

Mr. Ridley: My hon. Friend is right, but it does not seem to matter how successful the Government's economic and industrial strategy is, Opposition Members simply want to find party political points to make against us.

Mr. Andrew MacKay: May I bring my right hon. Friend's mind back to the role of the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown)? Is not it right that the Commission has clearly reported that there was no special tax treatment for British Aerospace and that there was no undervaluation of Rover for British Aerospace? In the circumstances, when we continually ask the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East to withdraw the allegations that have now been proved to be false, why does the hon. Gentleman not do so? Would my right hon. Friend care to speculate on his motives?

Mr. Ridley: I endorse every word of my hon. Friend's question. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East may wish to—

Mr. Gordon Brown: Answer the question. What has the Commission said about the tax concession?

Mr. Ridley: No, my hon. Friend asked me to speculate on the hon. Gentleman's motives for not coming forward and making a clean breast of the fact that he has got it wrong. I could do that, but, although I have not found the hon. Gentleman very damaging these past two months, I have developed a certain affection for him, so I will not press the point.

Mr. Doug Henderson: Of the many questions which still remain unanswered, will the Secretary of State give a clear answer to two? First, will he confirm that the European Commission has demanded further written information on the tax concessions given to British Aerospace? Secondly, when the Secretary of State puts correspondence in the Library, will he include with it the legal advice that was given to Lord Young and the Prime Minister?

Mr. Ridley: I am afraid that the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East has not responded to the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Berkshire, East (Mr. MacKay). He seems to be completely unable to speak.
I am delighted to answer the two questions put by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson). He has my assurance that all documents on the matter that are not normally kept confidential will be placed in the Library. Documents between the British Government and the Commission are treated as documents between two Governments and are not normally released, but the hon. Gentleman will have no difficulty in obtaining any information that he wants. I can give him an assurance that we have no difficulty whatever in answering the points about the tax treatments, which are mainly, I think, due to the Commission's failure to understand how the system works.

Points of Order

Mr. Dave Nellist: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Alex Carlile: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that I called both hon. Members. What is the point of order? I call Mr. Nellist first.

Mr. Nellist: Given the specific questions asked by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) and my hon. Friends the Members for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) and for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), and as the Attorney-General is still present in the Chamber, will you, Mr. Speaker, confirm that if the right hon. and learned Gentleman were to approach you now to be allowed to make a statement about the legal advice given to Lord Young, you would allow him to make one?

Mr. Speaker: I have received no notification that the Attorney-General wishes to do that.

Mr. Richard Holt: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday, I may inadvertently have misled the House, and if so I want to correct myself. At one stage during Question Time, I alluded to a rather nefarious contract negotiated by Middlesbrough council. I suggested that a Middlesbrough councillor was on the board of the new company concerned. I was mistaken. It was a Cleveland county councilor.

Mr. Speaker: I am not sure whether that is a point of order for me.

Mr. Bob Cryer: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. There is a rule, regarding the tabling of questions, that matters relating to internal Government administration are not answerable. Will you, Mr. Speaker, confirm that legal advice given by the Attorney-General to a Minister on an important issue of public policy, such as the sale of British Leyland, does not fall into that category,

and that questions about that aspect put to the Attorney-General and to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry are answerable?

Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I recollect that, when the then Mr. Sam Silkin was Attorney-General, he not only refused to tell the Trade and Industry Committee what advice he had given but refused to attend the Committee to give it legal advice, saying that it was the established custom of the House to refuse both such requests.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop), who is an expert on such matters, has given the House an answer to the question of the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer).

Mr. Dennis Skinner: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Attorney-General is still in the Chamber, and you were asked to approach him with a view to allowing the right hon. and learned Gentleman to make a statement. The point was made by several right hon. and hon. Members that the Attorney-General should come clean. It is clear that he knows more, and he should be given the option of making a statement now on the legal advice that he tendered to the Prime Minister, Lord Young or anyone else as to the illegality of the Rover deal.

Mr. Speaker: The whole House knows that that is not a matter for me. Furthermore, there is ahead of us an important debate for which the whole House has been waiting for a long time. I shall take one more point of order.

Mr. Cryer: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Will you confirm that, in respect of the Property Services Agency and Crown Suppliers Bill, the Solicitor-General was required to attend the Committee to give it advice relating to internal workings and to explain the advice that had been given to Ministers?

Mr. Speaker: Perhaps that matter would more appropriately be the subject of a question from the hon. Member for a future Question Time.

European Legislation

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Chapman.]

[Relevant documents: Fourth Report from the Select Committee on Procedure, Session 1988–89, on the Scrutiny of European Legislation (HC 622, Vols. I and II) and the Government response (Cm. 1081); First Special Report from the Select Committee on European Legislation Session 1989–90, on the Scrutiny of European Legislation (HC 512)]

Mr. Speaker: A large number of right hon. and hon. Members wish to participate in this debate. I hope that it will be possible to accommodate them all, so I ask for brief contributions.

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Sir Geoffrey Howe): The Order Paper identifies as relevant to the debate the fourth report from the Select Committee on Procedure, and the Government's response to it. Both are important and constructive contributions to a continuing debate about how to improve the input of national Parliaments—in this case the House—to the formulation of European Community legislation as adopted by the Council of Ministers.
The Council, composed of Ministers drawn from national Governments, is of course the principal law-making body of the Community, so it is important that those Ministers should be fully sensitised to the views and interests of national Parliaments. Hence our belief that the House should be given the best means reasonably possible to achieve that. The Government's response to the Procedure committee's report is meant in that spirit.
This afternoon's report by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on the outcome of the Dublin European council emphasised the degree to which the EC is embarked upon a period of dynamic change. It involves the strengthening of Community institutions, the evolution of some form of European monetary union—stage 1 of which begins this Sunday, 1 July—and the completion of the single market by the end of 1992. The Community has to cope, too, with a challenging series of external issues, ranging from the unification of Germany, to the successful completion of the Uruguay round.
Taken together, these simultaneous challenges amount to what my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has called the labours of Hercules. So we are quite naturally committed as well to a more effective, more democratic Community whose institutions are well adjusted to cope with the challenges of change.
Against that backdrop, we welcome the opportunity that the Procedure Committee report offered to review the participation of the House, through its relationship with Ministers, in the law-making process of the Community. We have witnessed during recent months a growing interest in the role of national Parliaments in that process, linked to the more general debate about possible institutional reform, which will now carry through to the intergovernmental conferences that will begin in Rome in December.
In stressing the role of national Parliaments vis-a-vis the Council, I do not underestimate the real and growing significance of the European Parliament. But we should

view the two Parliaments as complements, not competitors, in the process of enhancing democratic accountability within the Community. The European Parliament has a valuable part to play in suggesting amendments to the Council. Our proposals for institutional reform also suggest that it should play an enhanced role in holding the Commission to account, in overseeing its administration of agreed Community policy and helping to ensure proper financial accountability.

Mr. Jonathan Aitken: My right hon. and learned Friend speaks of the enhanced role that he sees for the European Parliament, yet one of the most vital roles that this Parliament has to play in scrutinising legislation depends on Ministers giving accurate information to right hon. and hon. Members. On 23 April 1986, my right hon. and learned Friend told the House that he derided as "children with fantasies"—I think was the phrase he used—those who feared the European Parliament, the European Court, and other European institutions taking increased powers. All the ridicule that flowed from my right hon. and learned Friend on that occasion has proved to be totally and utterly wrong. When it comes to the question of scrutiny, it is vital that the House is given accurate information from the Dispatch Box.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The essential and most accurate information that is the foundation of comprehension here is given in a written answer in today's Hansard by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, which sets out clearly the extent to which, for example, the issues arising from the case reported last week flow directly from the European Communities Act 1972, which itself implements article 5 of the treaty in that respect, which was not significantly altered by the Single European Act. All those matters flow from the decision by Parliament at that time and from the development of European Community law as part of the directly applicable law in this country.
The systems for national parliamentary scrutiny of draft EC law that we already have in this House and in another place are often cited as models from which other national Parliaments can learn. My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) is right to want them improved still further, and this debate is designed to achieve just that.

Dr. Keith Hampson: May I emphasise that many of us who are pro-European Community believe that national Parliaments are of premier concern rather than the growth of the European Parliament, and that the best way of ensuring that the views of national Parliaments are communicated to the European Parliament would be some form of second chamber, such as exists in Germany and Sweden? It is a long tradition in Europe that the individual constituent's interests are reflected in a second chamber. National Parliaments could have direct representation in the European Parliament in that way.
Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that the current process does not mark the end of his thinking and that he will consider in the intergovernmental conferences to come a major institutional switch of the kind that I described?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: That is a broader question, which I have no doubt that my hon. Friend can develop in his own speech, if he is lucky enough to catch the Chair's eye. I must today deal with the procedures of this House.
On anyone's analysis it is important that this House should be as well equipped as possible to focus on new issues of concern to the United Kingdom as they arise in the Community, so that the Government can take proper account of the views of the House in negotiations leading up to legislative decisions by the Council of Ministers. That is the essence of what we have come to call parliamentary scrutiny.
It does not of course mean—this is common ground on both sides of the House—that the United Kingdom's views will necessarily prevail in those deliberations. The widespread use of majority voting inevitably means that the United Kingdom will sometimes find itself in the minority, but the best way to influence the course of negotiations, and so secure the best result for the United Kingdom, is to have clear objectives from an early stage. Parliamentary scrutiny of the intentions and objectives of the Ministers concerned makes a crucial contribution to that process.
The present procedures were designed by a Committee under the chairmanship of our former colleague as Member for Northwich, the late Sir John Foster, in 1973. Although they were reviewed in 1978 by the Select Committee on Procedure, they have remained largely unchanged since our accession to the Community. However, with the adoption of the Single European Act in 1986, and the subsequent enactment by Parliament of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1986, it was clearly timely for the Procedure Committee to examine the options for bringing the scrutiny process up to date.
The Government, indeed the whole House, are therefore most grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery) and his Committee for this timely, thorough and well judged report. I shall draw attention to three or four of its key findings.
First, and perhaps surprisingly, the report notes in paragraphs 11 and 12 that neither the volume of European documents coming before the House, nor the number recommended for debate, has risen significantly in recent years. That puts in perspective any suggestion that we are being overwhelmed by a rising tide of documents from Brussels.
Secondly, the report found in paragraph 15 that the adoption, before completion of the scrutiny process, of proposals designated as legally or politically important was comparatively unusual. In 1988–89 there were no such occasions, and there have been only two so far this Session, both of which involved urgent measures for aid to Poland and Hungary. So debates are normally being held in time to influence the United Kingdom's negotiating objectives at the relevant meeting of the Council of Ministers.
Thirdly, the report contains the following important conclusion in paragraph 116:
The notion that the House of Commons lags behind other EEC Parliaments in the effectveness of its scrutiny machinery was not corroborated in any of the evidence we received and, indeed, was contradicted by a number of authoritative witnesses.
That is encouraging. Several other member states have been examining our system with a view to strengthening their own procedures. But of course we must not be complacent in this respect.

Dr. John Cunningham: I concur with the conclusion of the Committee, based on the evidence presented to it, but the conclusion could be read in an entirely different way—one which suggests that throughout the Community there is no effective scrutiny of this legislation in any member state.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: It can be read to support the proposition with which I started: that there is growing interest throughout the Community in the establishment of more effective scrutiny of this kind. The House has what is widely regarded by other Parliaments as an exemplary system, but I do not think that we should regard our system with such complacency—hence this debate and this report.

Mr. Ron Leighton: rose—.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I should like to make a little headway.
Finally, the report notes:
We have been struck by the unanimity of the evidence submitted to us about the continuing need for a body to perform the sifting functions of the Scrutiny Committee.
So, again, on behalf of the Government, and the whole House, I gladly record our view that the Scrutiny Committee, under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), performs that essential task thoroughly, effectively and conscientiously.
The Government therefore welcome the fact that the report of the Procedure Committee seeks to build on and improve the existing system, rather than trying to start again from scratch. We are also grateful to the Scrutiny Committee for its special report, published only yesterday, and we will look carefully at the points that it makes when formulating our final proposals.

Mr. Leighton: Is it not true that we can scrutinise until we are blue in the face, but the point is that power is being taken away from this Parliament?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: To the extent that the treaty makes provisions for decisions to be taken by majority votes—as I have already said—we cannot ensure that our will will prevail. That has been the position from the moment we acceded to the European Community's treaty in the first place.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: It was confirmed by referendum.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: It was confirmed by referendum and modestly extended in the subsequent provisions of the Single European Act. That is the point that I have already made. Scrutiny is important to ensure that British Ministers who attend the Councils go there armed as effectively as possible with the views of the House to see whether they can get those views to prevail.

Mr. Leighton: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman recall that, in that referendum, the Government of the day issued a manifesto which said that no important decision would be taken without the agreement of a British Minister, answerable to the House of Commons.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I was not a member of the Government of the day because it was a Labour Government: The position is as I have described it.


Majority voting was provided for from the outset in some 40 articles of the treaty of Rome and in about a dozen more articles under the Single European Act.
As hon. Members will know, the Select Committee rejected the idea of a single Select or Grand Committee for Community matters, and proposed instead the creation of a new system of European Standing Committees—as we think they might be called—with specific subject areas. It recommended closer informal contacts between Members of Parliament and MEPs. It suggested that the Scrutiny Committee's remit, as well as the range of documents available to it, should be widened. It wanted more forward-looking general debate before European Councils, but it shared the near-universal recognition by those who gave evidence to the Committee that the late night, one-and-a-half hour debates on the Floor of the House on EC documents have become progressively less useful for their declared purpose, and progressively more inconvenient for the House.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: I intervene in this encouraging and optimistic speech because there are hundreds of ladies outside asking if there is anything that we can do to prevent the Common Market from removing the restrictions on the export of live horses and ponies to the continent. As I have advised them—rightly or wrongly—that there is nothing that I or any other hon. Member can do about that, can the Secretary of State say whether the new arrangements will make any difference? It is important that people who take the trouble to come to the House of Commons to complain about something be given some idea about whether we have such power now—I understand that we do not—or will have under the new arrangements.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: Nothing that we are debating today will alter the provisions of the treaty and associated provisions on that issue. I am not in a position to offer precise advice about the exact state of national or Community law on it. I suspect that the outcome may depend, in some respects, on how far we are able to persuade our Community partners to accept a general framework of law that would meet the objectives that my hon. Friend has in mind. To that extent, this debate is relevant, because if the improved procedures that we are discussing enable my hon. Friend—with even more assiduity than usual—to arm Ministers from this country with stronger arguments, the debate will have been of advantage. I cannot answer about the precise provisions of Community law on that topic without notice.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Perhaps I can help the Leader of the House. The hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) could suggest to his constituents that, if the European Parliament were given a greater legislative role, they might be able to lobby it more effectively, and see their lobbying translated into action. It is the actions of hon. Members such as the hon. Gentleman that have prevented that change, which many of my hon. Friends have wanted.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: rose—.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am afraid that I cannot give way to answer further questions from my hon. Friend. I remind him that I am not speaking as the Secretary of State—still

less as the Foreign Secretary or the Solicitor-General. I am merely the Leader of the House and there is a limit to my imputed knowledge in respect of these matters. There is even a limit to my omniscience as deputy Prime Minister.
That insight about the importance and effectiveness of the late-night debates will form the central basis of the Government's response. In offering our response, however, we did not wish to pre-empt the views of the House. That is why we have not yet moved to make any detailed amendments to the Standing Orders. We shall certainly consider all the points that may be raised in this debate before putting our detailed proposals before the House later this Session, with the aim of operating any new arrangements from the start of next Session.
I am pleased to say that the Government are willing to accept the great majority of recommendations in the Procedure Committee report.
The main change, which I have already mentioned, would be the establishment of a series of new European Standing Committees, each of them specialising in particular subjects. Unlike the ad hoc Standing Committees on EC documents, which are selected afresh for each debate, the new Committees would have members appointed for a Session, so that they could build up expertise in particular subjects. We have also accepted that the new Committees should have powers to question Ministers for up to an hour about the relevant EC proposals before debating the documents.
The Procedure Committee report recommended the establishment of five such Committees, but, as the report acknowledges, there is a limit to the number of hon. Members who could be expected to make such a commitment. So, for strictly practical and not for philosophical reasons, we propose to start by setting up three Committees and to review the matter at the end of the first Session. Given the uncertainty involved in any new system, I hope that that approach will commend itself to the House.

Mr. Bowen Wells: Is my right hon. and learned Friend suggesting—it is not clear to me from the report—that the Committees will enjoy the same continuity that Select Committees enjoy and will be established for a Parliament?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: As I explained, the present intention is to establish them for one Session. That is in contrast to the existing Standing Committees on EC documents, which are established on a one-off, ad hoc basis. It has not yet been concluded whether Members will be reappointed and I look forward to hearing the views of the House on such matters during the debate.
Like the Procedure Committee, we felt that a single Standing Committee or a Grand Committee would be unable to handle the number and variety of debates—about 50 per Session—that are recommended by the Scrutiny Committee.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: May I comment on that in the presence of the Chairman of the Procedure Committee? We spent a lot of time on the matter and I had strong views in favour of a European Grand Committee. It was argued that we would not get the necessary membership. But could not we have had a Committee with a fixed quorum, an established membership and, in addition, a rotating membership? Such a Committee could have become a forum for debate on European matters where hon.


Members could come and go and debate these matters. I think that such a Committee would always have been manned.
The problem with the recommendation is that we may have a lot of trouble in attracting hon. Members who want to question Ministers, as the Leader of the House suggested, and to fulfil the responsibilities that we recommend in our report.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am trying to give way as often as I sensibly can, but I would rather not give way to hon. Members who have already fought these battles in the Select Committee. It is important that I should try and conclude my speech, and, although I respect the wisdom of the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), I hope that he will forgive me if I move on.
It is important to stress that, under our proposals, any hon. Member would be free to attend the Committees' debates if they wished. To encourage that, I am considering another recommendation on the best way of drawing attention to the Committees' forthcoming debates in my weekly business statement.
The establishment of the new Committees is central to the new system. We foresee a number of benefits. First, the new system will allow most debates to take place at a civilised hour and reduce the number of late-night, sparsely attended EC debates, which are all too frequent at present.
Secondly, it will offer hon. Members, including those who are not members of the Committees, the opportunity to play a more effective role by allowing them to question Ministers and thus to assess and influence Government policy more fully.
We are still considering the breakdown among the three Committees—of the matters to be considered—and in particular whether the division should be on a subject or on a departmental basis. We should welcome the views of the House on that. Clearly, however, it will be desirable that the number of debates is split as evenly as possible between the Committees, although allowances must be made for variations in the subjects on which proposals are emerging from Brussels. That matter, too, would be subject to review at the end of the Session.
There is one point on which we have gone beyond what the Procedure Committee recommended and on which I know the Scrutiny Committee takes a different view from the Government. It relates to the system of referring documents to the Committees. We believe that the new arrangements will allow more effective scrutiny in Committee and to allow them to prove their effectiveness we wish to work on the presumption that the majority of debates will in future be taken in Committee instead of on the Floor of the House as at present.
To that end, we propose to change the balance of the present referral system so that all documents will automatically stand referred to a Committee unless, after discussion through the usual channels, a motion is tabled to hold the debate on the Floor of the House. I expect that to change the proportion so that about two thirds of the debates will take place in Committee rather than on the Floor of the House as they are at present. It will be open to the Scrutiny Committee to recommend that a particular document should be debated on the Floor of the House if it regards that as especially important, and the Government would naturally take that into account.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: It might be better to clear this matter up now rather than later. The difference between the Scrutiny Committee's views and those of the Leader of the House is rather less than he supposes. I think that, for the reasons that he explained, it is likely that the majority of referrals from the Scrutiny Committee will be to the new Standing Committees, and the presumption ought to be that they should be so referred. The difference between us has to do with whether the judgment should ultimately lie with the House, or with the Government, in consultation. For all sorts of reasons, the House would prefer that the judgment should remain with it, although, in all honesty, I think that if that happened, we should still achieve the result that the right hon. and learned Gentleman seeks.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that compact and courteous intervention. I have studied the report that the Scrutiny Committee produced yesterday on this very topic. What emerges from the analysis in that report is that our proposals go with the grain of actuality, which is another way of saying that the outcome may be much the same. It is our judgment that it is best to tilt the balance of decision making in that way, and that is perhaps an understandable difference of judgment between us. No doubt views will be expressed on the matter during the debate.
The Government's response also confirms our continued intention to try to bring proposals before the Scrutiny Committee rapidly and to arrange prompt debates when that Committee so recommends. We have, in general, steadily improved our record in that respect. On occasion, there may be a balance to be struck, as the report notes: a debate too early in the life of a proposal increases the risk that it may be approved in a substantially different form. Even so, we expect that a presumption in favour of early debates will make it increasingly rare for proposals to come to a Council for adoption before the House has had a chance to debate them. Because of that, the Government have not accepted the suggestion that Ministers might make oral statements before a Council as a substitute for a debate.
The Procedure Committee report also advocated that improved opportunities should be provided for hon. Members to debate general developments in the EC—as opposed to specific legislative proposals before the Council of Ministers. The Government welcome that. The most recent six-monthly debate was already more forward-looking and took place before the Dublin summit. In future, such debates might be renamed simply "European Community debates" and would give the House an opportunity to express its views on issues that are expected to be considered at European Council meetings.
On a more technical point, we have accepted the recommendation for a modest extension in the terms of reference of the Scrutiny Committee. That will regularise the Committee's position by giving it a more formal mandate to carry out inquiries which the Government felt that it was already able to conduct. The hon. Member for Newham, South has been suggesting such a change for a number of years and, as suggested in yesterday's special report from his Committee, we shall be discussing with him the precise wording.
The Government response recognises the benefits to be gained by building up informal links between this Parliament and Members of the European Parliament. We


fully support initiatives such as the conference of scrutiny committee chairmen from the 12 member states—with European Parliament representation—held in Cork last month and the proposed parliamentary "assizes" at which both European Parliament and national Parliament representatives would be present, which is to be held in Italy later in the year to discuss preparations for the intergovernmental conference.

Mr. George Robertson: I simply seek information from the Leader of the House about the idea of assizes, which has been put forward by the European Parliament. Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman tell the House more about that proposal? When is it likely to be held, will there be a delegation to it from this Parliament, and how will it be chosen?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I thought for a moment that I was going to be cross-examined about the linguistic background to the use of the word "assizes" in this context. As a former member of the Wales and Chester circuit, I have a clear understanding of what the assize commission is like. I doubt whether this assize will be anything like that. It is an interesting example of a possible mistranslation of the word "assize", which means something quite different from what we used to know at the Lampeter assizes.
This gathering is likely to take place in October, during the Italian presidency—which is the next one. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has already commended it in concept to the House, in the debate the other day. On that basis, we hope that representatives from this Parliament will be present. I cannot yet give the House any more information, save to say that both he and I have given a favourable response to it, so one hopes that there will be a reasonably favourable outcome.
Various channels are already in operation between Members of Parliament and Members of the European Parliament. Many of those are on a party basis for contact and for the exchange of views between hon. Members and Members of the European Parliament. The European Democratic group now meets regularly in the Palace of Westminster. It meets proudly, progressively and effectively here. I hope that such contacts can be cultivated and that more contacts and channels can be opened.
I know that the recommendation in the report on telephone and postal charges for communications with Community institutions will be especially valued by hon. Members, and the Services Committee has commissioned further work on both. I hope to make further progress on all of this in the not-too-distant future. We are also looking at the question of wider access for Members of the European Parliament to the House facilities in other respects.
The principles on which the Government have based their response to the report are first, that Britain wants to maximise its influence in the Community, secondly, that the House wants to play a constructive part in influencing the content of Community legislation and thirdly, that Westminster and the European Parliament can, each in its own distinctive ways, significantly increase the democratic accountability of both the Council and the Commission.
Against that background, the Government hope and believe that this response will help to bring our scrutiny

procedures up to date and will allow the House to play a proper role in the consideration of Community legislation. For these to work effectively requires a positive commitment by the Government—which I give—and a commitment by the House. On that basis, our combined input can be substantial, and I commend these documents for consideration by the House.

Dr. John Cunningham: It is good that this debate is taking place on a motion for the Adjournment of the House, because that provides an opportunity for all of us to reflect on the documents before us: the report of the Select Committee on Procedure of November 1989, the Government response of May of this year, and, last but not least, the report by the Select Committee on European Legislation which was published yesterday. I welcome the opportunity spelt out in the speech of the Leader of the House for us to give our observations and comments, and for the Government to take them away and to consider them before any definitive proposals are brought to the House for a decision.
There is general agreement about the need for improved procedures for scrutiny of European business and legislation. That must be so, not only in the present circumstances but because of the increasing momentum of change in Europe, the completion of the single market in 1992 and the developing debate on economic and monetary union. The debate on the social charter is of particular importance to Labour Members and I deplore the Prime Minister's description of it as "piffling little powers". There are many important issues embodied in the social charter and we want to see an informed debate about them. When we also consider the possible enlargement of the Community and the dramatic changes in eastern Europe, we can only conclude that all this vital—and often exciting—train of events will demand and deserve more time for debate and consideration in the House of Commons.
Today, we have had the latest example of the need to have more effective and more wide-ranging financial scrutiny and control of our own Government in respect of their dealings involving the European Community. I wish to put on record the fact that no Labour Member decried or denounced the achievements of Rover under the ownership of British Aerospace. That was not the issue. The issue was a deception of Parliament and the European Community by the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, the predecessor of the present holder of that high and important office.
The Leader of the House made the point that our existing procedures for scrutiny have barely changed since they were introduced in 1973. I agree that we should see the Strasbourg Parliament and this House as complementary—as working in co-operation on these important issues of policy and these important developments—and not as being in conflict. There is ample opportunity for both Parliaments to improve the scrutiny and control of legislation.

Mr. William Cash: I have been looking at the wonderful document, "Looking into the Future", produced by the Labour party as a run-up to the next general election. The Labour party has a great deal to say there about the European Community. Can the hon. Gentleman give us some idea how this so-called


"complementary relationship" would function if the Labour party agreed to allow the Community institutions to acquire a higher function—in relation, for example, to a central bank than Conservative Members would be prepared to allow? Can he comment on the way in which that scrutiny would operate?

Dr. Cunningham: That intervention has nothing to do with the debate. As the hon. Gentleman has not even got the title of the document right, I do not have much confidence in his analysis of the contents. [HON. MEMBERS: "What are they?"] I am quite happy to depart into a debate about the Labour party policy and the document "Looking to the Future." That is not one of the documents on the Table of the House for discussion today, but if the Leader of the House will provide time, we may be able to come to that matter.
I recognise the importance of the work of the Procedure Committee in preparing its recommendations to the House under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery) and improvements in procedures are always welcome to me personally. I take no pleasure—this week is a perfect example—in sitting here until the early hours of the morning scrutinising legislation, whether it be United Kingdom legislation or legislation from the European Community. It is an unsatisfactory way for any Parliament to operate, and anything which improves that is, in principle, welcome to me and, I believe, to most Opposition Members.
I also applaud the work of the Select Committee on European Legislation under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), who is indefatigable in devoting himself to his responsibilities in these matters. He is always skilful and certainly always tireless in his pursuit of the issues, and we are grateful to him and to his Committee for the publication of their report yesterday in time for discussion today.

Sir Russell Johnston: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that keeping the House up for an hour voting last night was a waste of time and simply used up hon. Members' energy? That was in the power of the Labour Chief Whip.

Dr. Cunningham: In the midst of controversial legislation, the House often has many Divisions. I cannot say that I enjoy it, but it is often important for political parties to put on record their views of particular issues—and the hon. Gentleman's party is no exception. As there is such a wide gulf between the Labour party and the Government on issues involving the national health service, in the judgment of my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) it was important for us to record our position in the Division Lobby last night. Like the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston), I cannot say that I enjoyed it, but sometimes it is important to put matters on record.
Despite all the hours that many hon. Members spend in this place and all the work that we put in, the House of Commons is a relatively weak and deficient legislature—in many respects, not just in its scrutiny of European legislation. In the past decade, the momentum of legislative change has increased dramatically. From a Government who came to office professing less government, we have had more government and more legislation than ever before. Yet our democratic processes

and political and constitutional arrangements have apparently been beyond question, protected on some mythical high ground as a tidal wave of change washes over everything and everyone else. I welcome debates of this kind, because at least we are talking about the need for a strengthened, modernised and better informed House of Commons, which can begin to redress the imbalance between a centralising executive Government and the House which has the duty to examine, question and hold them to account.
As I have said, we have just witnessed an example of that imbalance in the totally inadequate statement and responses from the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on the Government's deception with regard to the sell-off of Rover to British Aerospace. That was ironic when just last month, following the European Community summit meeting, the Prime Minister said that she would do her best to see that as much information as possible comes before the House. Her message certainly did not get through to her Trade and Industry Secretary—or perhaps it did and, characteristically, he simply dismissed it.
Accountability in decision-taking at whatever level is a basic requirement of democracy. If the European Community is to be more effective, it must develop an improved system for making decisions. Over the years, the Community has gained powers from this and other national Parliaments. That process has not been accompanied by greater accountability and scrutiny. Where decisions are rightly made at the European level, the decision makers must be accountable.
We believe that the European Parliament should also be given the powers that it needs to complement and not replace national parliaments. The scrutiny of European Community legislation is an important aspect of our work and it will continue to grow in importance. At present, the House deals with European business in what is universally regarded as an inadequate fashion. As the volume and importance of decision-making in Europe has increased, we in the House have failed to keep pace with developments.
The Opposition therefore welcome the debate on specific proposals to improve the procedures with which we scrutinise that business. I should make it clear that in my view, whatever Ministers may say—the Leader of the House seemed somewhat complacent—the way in which the Government have restricted opportunities for hon. Members to question Ministers on European matters over the past decade has not been a good example of how to proceed. Statements on Ministerial Councils have become a rarity, being made only when a Minister wants to publicise a so-called success, usually blocking a progressive move for co-ordinated action on the environment, for example.
Twice-yearly debates on Community developments often occur months after the period reported, but I am pleased to welcome the proposed changes, the suggestion that we should have a European affairs general debate and the proposal that the Leader of the House should announce at business question time each Thursday what European business will be coming before the House.
As a result of the Single European Act, the Council of Ministers can decide on measures to implement the 1992 single market by a qualified majority vote. That may have focused our minds on the fact that our scrutiny of European legislation has become somewhat out of date,


but it has made the status quo even more unacceptable in the process. We therefore have to move to a new, better and more effective system of dealing with such matters.
The practice of regular ministerial statements after important Council of Ministers meetings has almost disappeared and nothing has been done to fill the gap and to enable Parliament to question Ministers. That remains a major problem. The decisions taken by the Councils are to important for the House not to have adequate opportunities to influence them or to express an opinion on their work. Hon. Members need more information and access to what is happening in the European Community. Given the increasing volume and speed of decision-taking at Council levels, the House needs to be far more alert.

Mr. Hugh Dykes: In that connection, do the Opposition support the idea of postage and telephone call facilities? Without any disrespect to the way in which the Services Committee operates, the danger is that the consideration and study of the matter will mean further weeks and months of delay while a relatively simple system is put in place which most other Parliaments have adopted long since as a matter of routine. Will the Opposition undertake to support celerity and haste in this matter?

Dr. Cunningham: The short answer to that is yes, but I will explain in more detail a little later.
I commend to the House the memorandum submitted for consideration by my Friends the Members for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) and for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) to the Procedure Committee. Here lies the major difference between the Government and the Labour party. As I have said, I welcome much of what the Leader of the House has said, but I do not welcome the proposal for three Committees. We adhere to our view that a Grand Committee on European affairs is a far better and more practicable approach. It is a matter not of ideology but of having a practicable system for working in the House.
I have reservations, which are shared by the Whips Office, about the ability permanently to provide sufficient hon. Members to man the Committees in the way envisaged by the Leader of the House. Inevitably, there would be some pretty serious differences of opinion about the distribution of places on those committees between the parties. I do not believe that anything like sufficient consideration has been given to those matters.
I share the concern expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) in an earlier intervention about the Government deciding automatically whether a matter should be discussed in Committee rather than on the Floor of the House. That is a proposal to take power away from the House of Commons and vest it in the Executive. I have considerable hesitation about agreeing to that proposal. There is no record of the House being obstinate or obdurate about these matters, so I ask the Leader of the House to reconsider that proposal.

Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop: Before the hon. Gentleman leaves that point, would his objection be overcome if the Committee upstairs were accessible to all hon. Members, so that they are not frozen out by it being moved upstairs?

Mr. Cunningham: That is the proposal, but it does not meet the point that I am making. The whole House should have the opportunity to discuss these matters, and I put that on the record for further consideration. With a little more discussion, we may be able to reach agreement.
I welcome what the Leader of the House said about improving relations between hon. Members and Members of the Strasbourg Parliament. I understand the historic angst about Members being appointed or indirectly elected, but now there are democratically elected Members of the European Parliament representing Britain and we must have sensible working relations with them. The way in which they are treated when they come to this House is appalling. When I visit the European Parliament, I am made welcome as a guest. I have wide-ranging access to its facilities, yet Members of the European Parliament must queue like anyone else to get into this place. They have no access to the Galleries of the Chamber.
We have a Gallery for distinguished strangers, a Gallery for Peers, and other designated Galleries. I cannot for the life of me understand why we cannot have a row in the Gallery designated for Members of the European Parliament. That would be a simple way of showing the determination of the House to seek better relations with our colleagues. There are other ways in which we should enable elected Members of the Strasbourg Parliament to have access to other facilities in the House, but I shall not go into detail now.
I turn to the point made by the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes). It is a matter of astonishment to everyone, particularly business people, when I explain that if my Euro-Member of Parliament writes to me, he does so in effect at the taxpayer's expense, but if I reply to him I do so at my own expense. If he telephones me—he is a Conservative Member, but never mind—from Strasbourg or Brussels, the call is paid by the European Parliament from public funds. If I telephone him in Brussels or Strasbourg, I receive a bill. That is surely nonsense, and I hope that the procedures can be accelerated so that we can resolve it soon.
As the Leader of the House knows, European Members of Parliament can travel anywhere in Europe on legitimate parliamentary business. I see no reason why hon. Members should not be able to make a limited number of visits to Strasbourg or Brussels, at public expense, in pursuit of legitimate business on behalf of their constituents. Until we involve ourselves in what is happening in Europe and other member states, we shall always be seen as reluctant, or we shall lose out because we are not using the institutions of the European Community half so effectively as the national Parliaments of other member states.
I hope that my response to the introduction to the debate by the Leader of the House, much of which I agreed with, has been helpful and constructive. I further hope that, when we finally decide how the procedures should be changed, there will be much agreement across the Floor on the changes that should be implemented.

Sir Peter Emery: The debate is on two considerable matters of importance, and one follows from the other. First, we must make people understand, whether Members of Parliament like it or not, that major parts of British sovereignty and the direct control of part of the


British law have passed from the British Parliament to the European Economic Community. That is a fair but bland statement to make, but one that frequently is not clearly understood. Therefore, it is of greater importance than in the past, when British Ministers could veto EC directives and regulations, that the House should be able to examine carefully and, where necessary, debate the new laws passed by Brussels.
However, it must be understood that changes in procedure, which we are debating today, will do nothing to lessen our treaty obligations or the overall effect of the Single European Act. The fact that the Council of Ministers determines more and more issues under the majority voting procedure does not, nor should it, lessen the importance of the House maintaining proper scrutiny of the action of British Ministers. The expansion of majority voting may mean that there is a need to examine, and perhaps develop, new channels of influence. Therefore, two of the recommendations in the report deal with links with the European Parliament. None of that lessens the essential requirement for Ministers to be answerable 10, and examined by, the House for their action on European matters.
I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House and the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) for the kind remarks that they have made about me and the Select Committee on Procedure. The Committee does the work; I am only its instrument. I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for agreeing with my request that the Government's response to our report on the scrutiny of European legislation should be in the form of a White Paper rather than a letter to the Committee. That has allowed hon. Members to enter the debate fully informed of the Government's views and able to react to the report rather than having to listen to the speech and make judgments on a prima facie basis. Without wishing to sound pompous, I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on providing a response to every one of the 28 recommendations and not side-stepping any of them.
I need not repeat that the report is the first in-depth report providing detailed consideration of how the House deals with and scrutinises European legislation since the Procedure Committee report in 1978. We attempted to do a thorough job so that perhaps it will not be necessary to carry out a further investigation for another 10 years.
May I therefore divide my analysis of our report's recommendations into four different sections. First, I refer the House to paragraph 43 of our report:.
In the evidence submitted to us there was general agreement that the way in which the House currently debates European legislation is profoundly unsatisfactory. Particular criticism focused on the amount of time spent by the House after Ten o'clock on European business, notably in the form of debates subject to a 1½ hour limit under Standing Order No. 14. These were variously described as 'cursory' and 'not very well attended'. In addition, the then Leader of the House referred to the tendency of such debates to attract Members more interested in rekindling the embers of the argument over the principle of membership of the Community than in examining the detailed merits of a particular proposal … Stress was also laid during questioning on the great unpopularity of these late night occasions, particularly amongst backbench Members whipped for divisions which seldom materialise.
We were impressed by the strength of feeling about debates on Europe being set for a late hour and the sterility of major debates, which are taken twice a year in prime

time and were, until today, set only to consider matters in retrospect. Equally, we realised that to make demands on prime time for all the matters that the Scrutiny Committee considered and recommended for debate by hon. Members could not be practical.
We therefore recommended that the two major debates should be organised in the two weeks prior to the twice-yearly summit meeting, that the debate should be on a substantive motion and that the Government should be responsible for providing the House, prior to the debate, with a list of the matters likely to be on the summit agenda. Obviously it would be helpful if we could have the exact summit agenda, but I am informed that that is frequently not available until a few days before the summit meeting. However, the Foreign Office must know approximately what is likely to be debated at the summit meetings and it is obviously right and proper that the House should know about that before our debates take place.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Is not the description that my hon. Friend has just given of late night attendances equally true of attendances at 6.30 pm? That strengthens our point about having such debates upstairs in Committee rather than in an almost empty House.

Sir Peter Emery: My hon. Friend may well be right. I was hoping that the two debates every six months on European matters would attract a greater number of hon. Members interested in them if hon. Members were to be debating matters for the future rather than referring to things that had happened weeks or months previously and upon which the views of the House could have no effect.
The second major alteration to procedure is our recommendation that the new special European Standing Committees should be established, with the same membership, for a year instead of for the duration of a Parliament. We thought that it would be too much to ask someone to commit himself to such a Committee for the length of a Parliament. We thought that it was reasonable for someone to commit himself for a year to consider upstairs the bulk of the matters which the Scrutiny Committee recommended should be considered by the House.
Those special European Standing Committees should have power to hear statements from Ministers and to cross-exaine them on the relevant documents before the Committee before proceeding to the normal consideration by way of a debate on the documents. We considered whether those Committees should be given powers to call for papers and persons, but we thought that that would duplicate the work of the departmental Select Committees. We thought that it was necessary to have details about the documents before the Committee and that that could best be achieved by cross-examining the Minister responsible.

Mr. David Winnick: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of our important recommendations in the report was that there should, as far as possible, be a link between the new Committees—the Government have accepted at least three of those—and the departmental Select Committees which cover the same subjects? Would it not be unfortunate if, for example, the Select Committee on Agriculture did not know what the special scrutiny Committee on Agriculture was doing? There should be a link, and that is why we suggested that at least two members of a departmental Select Committee should be members of the special Standing Committees


that we are recommending. That linkage is important because, if it does not exist, the two Committees will not know what is going on.

Sir Peter Emery: The hon. Gentleman has kindly dealt with a whole paragraph of my speech, to which I now need not refer.
We saw the importance of the hon. Gentleman's point. My only criticism of having three special Committees instead of five is that it will be difficult to ensure a link with two Committees, perhaps between finance and trade and industry, which would involve four members of the Select Committee, so that only six other members would be left on that Select Committee. There are difficulties, but I agree that there must be seen to be a link between the departmental Select Committees and the work of the specialist European Standing Committees.
To encourage greater interest in European regulations, we believe that matters on the same subject being considered by those with a particular interest and whom we hoped would want to serve on those Special European Committees would provide better and more expert consideration, especially as service over the year built up and the committee members understood the problems that they had to consider.
There must be no misunderstanding about the fact that all hon. Members can attend and speak at the special European Committees. We want to encourage all hon. Members interested in particular subjects to do that. The only limitation is that they will have to catch the Chairman's eye and they would not be able to vote on the motion before the Committee because that would be the responsibility of the members appointed to the Committee. Hon. Members would have full powers to attend the Committee and to question the Minister so long as the Chair recognised them.

Mr. Wells: With regard to linkages, the Select Committee on European Legislation has the power to call for persons and papers. Indeed, the British sausage was discussed in the House today and the European Legislation Committee undertook considerable investigations to inform the House about that issue. Therefore, such information would be available to the special European Standing Committee before it sat.

Sir Peter Emery: My hon. Friend is right, and that is why there should be co-operation between the two bodies. That underlines the point made by the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick).
We have asked the Leader of the House to announce in his weekly business statement what documents will be considered by each of the special European Standing Committees, the day on which the debates will take place and which matters will be considered. This information should also be included in the party Whips. That would encourage hon. Members to attend the special Committees. It would also provide them with an opportunity to attend. We hope that this will provide a regeneration of interest among hon. Members instead of leaving those important matters to hon. Members who have been described as the "European buffs". The availability of such information would stimulate full and proper interest in the matter before the Committee instead

of leading to a debate which degenerated into arguments about whether we should or should not have signed the treaty of Rome.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: My hon. Friend continues to make assessments of those late night debates as comprising a bunch of idiots talking about past events, but I cannot recall his presence at many of those late night sittings.

Sir Peter Emery: I suggest that my hon. Friend is much too interested in taking part in such arguments to observe the number of people who must be kept here late at night as a result of his arguments. He fails to notice the number of people sitting about the Chamber or in the Corridors listening to those quite useless debates.
The Government have responded to our recommendation about the members of the special European Standing Committees by suggesting the appointment of only three instead of the five recommended by the Procedure Committee. My Committee recommends five because the vast majority of the work falls reasonably into the subject headings of agriculture, finance and treasury, trade and industry, transport and the environment and, finally, other subjects. That would seem to spread the load fairly evenly, although most of the work in the past has been on finance and agriculture.
We understand the arguments about limiting the number to three Committees, but it is essential that they are subject oriented. They should not all be general Committees. Indeed, the division might be agriculture; finance, Treasury and trade and industry; environment and transport with other subjects referred to whichever Committee seems most appropriate.
In order to attract hon. Members to serve on the new committees, it is essential that they know what major subjects each committee will consider. They must know when they ask to serve on one of the three Committees what subjects they will be asked to consider.
I must make it clear that the recommendations of the Procedure Commitee do not mean that every matter referred for consideration by the Standing Committee must be considered in Committee. There are bound to be some subjects—I am glad that the Leader of the House realises this—which both the Government and the House consider to be of sufficient importance to demand consideration on the Floor of the House. The hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, can debate more clearly than me who should make that decision.
I hope that when matters are considered on the Floor of the House there will be perhaps more than one debate on one day and they will be arranged to take place before 10 o'clock at night. If the debates are sufficiently important to be considered on the Floor of the House, they are important enough to attract some part of prime time.
The shadow Leader of the House referred to the possibility of creating a European Grand Committee. We studied that closely. As the members of the Committee will know, there was a divergence of views on the matter. The suggested rolling membership of the Grand Committee seemed to some of us to have a disadvantage. We were attempting to set up committees of people with specialist knowledge who could understand and deal in depth with specific subject matters that came before them. It seemed that such matters could be dealt with more sensibly by specific Committees than by a European Grand


Committee. On the difficulty of appointing members to the new Committees and obtaining volunteers, I remind the House that we already man a considerable number of Standing Committees on European Community documents each year. Such Committees may have different members, but the manning, or womaning—

Dr. Cunningham: Staffing.

Sir Peter Emery: Indeed, the staffing of such Committees is undertaken at present. The difficulty of finding members for the new Committees need be no greater than for Standing Committees now and hon. Members should be more willing volunteers.

Dr. Cunningham: I do not want to go into too much detail, but there are some important unanswered questions. For example, what will be the role of Opposition spokesmen in the Procedure Committee's proposals, which were largely endorsed by the Leader of the House? What will be the breakdown of the membership of the new Committees between the parties? It would be much easier to find members for one Grand Committee and maintain it with a reasonably limited quorum. If necessary, the Grand Committee could have sub-committees. That seems a far more practicable way to proceed. It will allow the creation of a forum in which both Ministers and members of the Committees can work. It is not clear whether the hon. Gentleman envisages that Ministers will be members of the Committees. Where would that leave Opposition spokesmen? If we had a Grand Committee the lines would be much more clearly drawn. It would be much more likely to lead to agreement between the parties.

Sir Peter Emery: Clearly, a Minister would have to be a member of the Committee because he would be cross-examined. We considered that it was obviously necessary to include an Opposition spokesman, whether the primary shadow Minister or a number two. That happens already in the manning of Standing Committees on European Community Documents. There is no great difficulty there. I hope that there will be no greater difficulty in future with the new committees than in the past. Of course, I understand that matters such as the hon. Gentleman mentioned would have to be dealt with. It would be foolish of me to suggest that there will be no complications. There are always complications when any change is made. But I hope that by creating new Committees, the change will be of considerable benefit.
I have not yet touched on our recommendations for the Scrutiny Committee. I understand that the Chairman of that Committee will seek to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. He can speak for himself; he does not need me to speak for him. He does an admirable amount of work for the House, and his new report published only yesterday is worthy of thorough consideration by the House. Although my Committee has not considered the recommendations of the Scrutiny Committee, I think we would basically agree with them.
Five other matters are worthy of note. The House is not behind other European Parliaments in the scope and detail of the consideration that it gives to European regulations. We are further ahead in our detailed consideration of scrutiny than any other Parliament. That does not mean that we are perfect, but we are further ahead than any other Parliament. The only nation that has a joint

parliamentary and MEP committee is Belgium. We considered the possibility of setting up such a committee. However, it was interesting to note that the Belgian committee does not consider any of the proposed regulations in detail. Mainly it holds general discussions on broad-brush issues affecting the EEC.
Among my Committee's witnesses there was almost a universal view that late-night one-and-a-half-hour debates have become ineffectual. We need to provide a means by which important European matters, and often new laws for Britain, can be considered by a much larger number of Members of Parliament than is the case at present. Lastly, the remit of the Scrutiny Committee should be extended somewhat.
I now turn to the relationship between Parliament and the European Parliament. The relations and contacts between Members of Parliament and MEPs are dealt with at the end of our report. As greater power passes to the European Parliament, as ways of questioning majority decisions by the Council of Ministers now lie with the European Parliament, and as members of the Commission and Commission decisions can be questioned by Members of the European Parliament, it behoves Parliament and Members of the House to work more closely with British MEPs than ever before. If not, the influence of Parliament on EEC decisions will become less and less. I believe that MEPs wish to encourage that closer relationship. We Members of Parliament should reverse our past general indifference to MEPs and warmly welcome greater contact and co-operation with them.
To some of my colleagues I must say that it is too late to fight past battles. We are now part of Europe. Let us help to lead the EEC, not sit and complain about it.
This debate will not be world shattering, nor are our recommendations and the Government's acceptance of them revolutionary. However, I honestly believe that there is a great need to improve present consideration by the House of European regulations as they affect Great Britain. Our present procedure has become moribund. The proper working of the suggested improvements, if considered and used by Members of Parliament, will provide a more detailed scrutiny and debate of European regulations and directives than ever previously achieved by the House.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me at this stage. It enables me, as Chairman of the Select Committee on European Legislation—commonly called the Scrutiny Committee—to thank the Chairman of the Select Committee on Procedure and his colleagues for all their work last autumn in producing a comprehensive report on matters relating to EEC scrutiny. Without that, the Government White Paper—to which the hon. Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery) referred—would probably not have been of the same quality. I also thank the Leader of the House not only for presenting that document as a White Paper, but for arranging today's Adjournment debate, which allows broad discussion. I thank him especially for what he said in his speech about proposed further discussions with me—I would represent my colleagues on the Committee—with a view to reaching a common agreement about changes in the Committee's


terms of reference, and in the all-important resolution of 1980 under which the Government operate, by order of the House.
The Committee did not issue its report until 7 o'clock last night. The delay was due to the crush of European legislation. In his speech less than 24 hours later, the Leader of the House has accepted at least one of the Committee's important requests and recommendations. I am tempted to say, "Is that a record?" Our special report HC 512 of this Session deals only with matters relating specifically to our terms of reference. I shall refer to that in a moment.
Publicity is the petrol of politics. It may not be well known to some hon. Members or to the public, but while the House is in session we publish a weekly report summarising important documents published by the Commission. Every week the report lists at the back the documents that are still lying on the Table of the House awaiting debate. They are listed in departmental order. That is an example of glasnost and visibility. Unfortunately, as not enough hon. Members know of the report, when European documents are debated in Committee or late at night in the House, some hon. Members are not so well prepared as they might be.
The Committee agreed with many of the recommendations of the Procedure Committee, especially the idea of turning the six-monthly debates into prospective views rather than discussions of a report which, of course, should still be laid. It also agreed with the request for more publicity for debates, and an undertaking by the Leader of the House—which he has repeated today—that during business questions he would announce what Committees will be in progress the following week.

Sir Russell Johnston: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the debates to which he has referred, although supposed to be about the report, have largely been concerned with the future and what was taking place at the time in the Community?

Mr. Spearing: Yes. The twice-yearly debates were invented when the then Ted Short was Leader of the House. We want the debates—as does everyone—a week or two before the official twice-yearly European Council meeting, but the agenda of that meeting is not always known. I shall not go off my track and talk about the arrangements and procedures adopted by the Council, but they sometimes make it difficult for the House to debate subjects which may come up at short notice.
The report of the Scrutiny Committee has been published and speaks for itself: I have a copy here for hon. Members who wish to read it. However, I should like the House to be aware of one or two important matters. The terms of reference of our Committee are still too narrow. As long ago as 1986, when we read about the Single European Act, we suggested that our terms of reference should be wider, and the Government have come some way towards that. We are grateful to them for saying that we may be able to see working documents and others that are not formally published but which come into the Government's hands. That would be helpful.
We would also like to see the Commission make documents available to interested parties in the United Kingdom. Why should trade associations or anyone else

be better informed than the House about the Commission's thinking? I hope that the Government will bear that request in mind, not just for the benefit of the Scrutiny Committee but for the benefit of other Select Committees—if not in the terms of reference, at least in terms of conduct.
The Committee welcomes the suggestion, in recommendations 17 to 19, that a Minister should be subject to perhaps an hour's questioning in Committee. Although various procedural matters may need to be worked out, I think that everyone agrees with the principle. However—as I said when I intervened in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham)—the Committee is unanimously opposed to the Government's suggestion that all documents should be referred automatically by Standing Order to a Committee. As I said to the Leader of the House in another intervention, I believe that many will be referred in any case, and the Committee would welcome that.
In the appendix to the Committee's report—published yesterday—we show that that is an increasing trend. A good morning Committee debate—especially if it is well publicised—can be more effective than a debate on the Floor of the House late at night, especially as hon. Members can speak more than once, which they cannot do in formal debates in the House. Nevertheless, there should still be a formal agreement on the Floor of the House to refer matters to a Committee. If there are any differences of opinion, they will be known, and the House will retain control.
I can give the Leader of the House good reason why that should be the case, if only to back up Government policy. When we meet our committee counterparts in other Parliaments, they are sometimes surprised at our powers, and amazed to learn that we can approach Ministers any time we like, although in reality they are usually contacted by our clerks on the telephone or by letter. While the powers of our Committees may not be as extensive as we would wish, they are none the less the subject of admiration. If there were automaticity, we could not make those claims. The Foreign Secretary has rightly said that we are beefing up the procedures of our Committees. It would be a pity if they were diminished. I hope that the Leader of the House will reconsider automaticity, because we would welcome the results.
The important resolution of 30 October 1980 considerably changed the way in which the House related to the Government. There have been major changes since 1975. That resolution still refers only to documents of legislation. The Government guarantee to have debates before a decision in Brussels, other things being equal, on legislative documents only. What is such a document? A White Paper is a notice of legislation. We all know that effective decisions are taken on a White Paper and that a debate on the subsequent Bill is not so effective as it might have been if one has not had a debate on the White Paper. The Select Committee on European Legislation is still unhappy that some matters of great importance are not necessarily debated. There was a little trouble over the Delors report because we did not debate it although we recommended such a debate. Unfortunately, the resolution did not bite.
The Scrutiny Committee has no competence under its terms of reference regarding the proposed three Standing Committees. My colleagues on the Select Committee share my belief that there could be practical problems if three


Committees only are appointed. We are more aware than anyone else of the volume of legislation which comes out as we wade through those documents every week. If that volume of legislation is channeled to the three Committees, albeit changed every Session and fortified—I was glad to hear from the Leader of the House that any Member attending will be attached to the Committee, which is what the Procedure Committee suggested—it may impose too great a work load on the Committee members. If a Committee dealt with trade and industry policy, the environment or various forms of transport ranging from air to shipping, one can imagine the volume and complexity of the issues to be dealt with by that one Committee. We know that Members have special knowledge or expertise in such matters, but the volume of work could present difficulties.
Perhaps we could undertake an experiment based on the present procedure for nomination to Committees undertaken by the Committee of Selection. I know that I might be calling horses for courses in that respect. More hon. Members than currently envisaged would be involved, but the number of documents and debates would be the same. Those hon. Members could be selected because of their specialist knowledge. Similarly, we could perhaps have a panel of volunteers available, selected by the usual organisers of our business. Plenty of notice should also be given to those hon. Members who have an interest in a particular subject but are not appointed members of the relevant Committee.
I thank the Leader of the House for the innovation evidenced on the Order Paper about which the Scrutiny Committee has been writing to him for some time. Last week there were no fewer than nine motions on the Order Paper which gave plenty of notice of the documents going upstairs. Today there are six such motions on the Order Paper—about cadmium in water, milk, meat safety and the rules relating to game and rabbit meat. They relate to specialised topics, but any citizen or hon. Member who reads our Order Paper will know that such topics will be debated in the near future. That will give hon. Members the opportunity to look up the relevant documents and to contact interested groups. It also gives the public the opportunity to contact hon. Members. Such interested hon. Members may volunteer to sit on the relevant new special Committee and perhaps the usual channels will go about their usual business. Those Committees mean that the Minister has an hour to set out his case and there is an hour of debate afterwards. That could lead to more effective scrutiny.
It is important to remember what the hon. Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery) said. At the end of the day, we are only advising Ministers who go to the Council of Ministers to partake in discussions. They then come back to the House with what they have or have not achieved.

Sir Peter Emery: It is important that the proposed Committees consider various issues because they will not only advise Ministers, but allow Members of the European Parliament to know our views. It is important for British Members of the European Parliament who are debating specific matters to know that they have been considered in Westminster and to know our views.

Mr. Spearing: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. The Second European Reading is equivalent to the second round, and it is most important that MEPs should know

what Members of this place think. If they read the Standing Committee record, they will have that information. I am sure that some members of the public—and, even important, people in industry and local government—are unaware that the Standing Committee proceedings are published within a couple of days of the sitting. The undertakings given by Ministers and the concerns expressed by hon. Members are published for the public to read. I hope that our colleagues in the European Parliament read those records before they take them to their respective committees. A great deal of work in the European Parliament is undertaken in such committees, and our records might prompt amendments to documents under discussion.

Mr. Leighton: We are torturing ourselves tonight talking about the unsatisfactory present situation and whether we should have one large Committee, three smaller ones or even more. We are doing so because we are trying to square the circle. We are trying to do the impossible. The truth is that the European Community and parliamentary democracy are incompatible. I do not know how many people read the Standing Committee records. Suppose a Committee considered the common agricultural policy and concluded it was a bad one because it put up food prices and damaged the third world. What effect would that have? It is difficult for the Whips to get hon. Members on to such Committees because of the essential futility of the scrutiny undertaken by them. It leads to nothing.

Mr. Spearing: I am grateful to my hon. Friend because I was about to say that, while I had made a speech which, I hope, was in the tradition of Chairmen of Select Committees and faithfully transmitted the Committee's views—my hon. Friends will let me know at the next meeting if I failed—I hope that it is in order to make a few more personal remarks with "Newham, South" across my head.
The first Member from West Ham, South was the founder of the party of which I have the privilege to be a member. The people of West Ham are not highly capitalised in terms of money, but in terms of skill and the expression of their opinions. They sent that man to represent their interests and to change the law because the law was the only protection that they had. That man came here on the day of the Loyal Address. He put down an amendment to it because it did not mention unemployment. It was selected and he divided the House.
The people of east London saw Parliament as their salvation, as it could change and make law. My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) is right that the attraction of the debate depends on the effectiveness of the decision reached. If one can only influence rather than decide, debates are marked by a low attendance—that follows as night follows day. To that extent I agree with my hon. Friend.
It is important to consider broader matters that may have escaped the attention of the House, especially those that the Scrutiny Committee cannot consider. What is on the menu at the moment? There is the procedural motion that the Prime Minister mentioned earlier to agree to an intergovernmental conference on political union. I do not believe that one could get a bigger procedural motion than that. We also have a report by Foreign Ministers on economic and monetary union. I do not think that the


Select Committee on Foreign Affairs will be dealing with such issues, and I note that the Chairman of that Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell), is in his place for the debate. We have a brace of Chairmen present this evening.
There is the question of parallel ecu currency—an issue which has caused much discussion. No doubt the Select Committee on the Treasury and Civil Service will wish to deal with that. There is a famous court case concerning fishermen that has caused much concern, and there is the question of the intervention of the Commission on the subject of compensation to British Aerospace, about which we have had a statement today.
It is clear that more and more matters of a European Community nature are coming before us. Many of them are beyond the scope of scrutiny in terms of legislation, although they are extremely current. I am not sure whether the House realises—I am trying, although my views are well known, to be impartially descriptive—the situation in which the British Parliament now finds itself.
If I was asked to describe all this to an invited audience, I would ask my listeners to try to imagine what London was like before all the road changes had taken place. One could go and park where one liked, there were no one-way streets to speak of and, generally speaking, the traffic lights were in one's favour so that one could turn right or left almost with impunity. Today the situation on the roads is almost the reverse, with giratories, one-way streets, no parking, no right turns, no commercial vehicles, no buses and many other restrictions.
That state of affairs has been arrived at because of the situation into which Parliament has got itself in terms of law-making, with its obligations to the treaty of Rome. We brought it on ourselves, and the Leader of the House was right to refer earlier to section 2(1) of the treaty. On the water, if one goes through red traffic lights—even if those behind urge one to do so and even if fishermen say, "You must go through those lights—do not worry because we have the Queen aboard and we are all agreed, including the Queen's representatives, that it is permissible to go through those red lights"—one is liable to be booked and find oneself up before the beak. That happened in the current case concerning fishermen.
The same can be said of the British Aerospace case. A sign at the beginning of Aerospace avenue might say "No public vehicles." In defence of what we believe to be the national interest—I appreciate the position of the Government—Her Majesty's Government said, "As we cannot put up a public vehicle, we will put up a private vehicle with £40 million money aboard." Somebody noticed that, and we find ourselves in trouble.
That may be a crude illustration but, in essence, it is the position in which the Parliament of the United Kingdom is now placed. There may be offsetting advantages—that is an issue that we constantly discuss—but we must be realistic in accepting that that is the position from the point of view of our law-making activities, and things are getting more serious.
In that connection, I recall the Prime Minister's remark to me earlier today about procedural motions. A motion to which she has put her signature in the past two days

relates to a statement in annex 1 of the Community communiqué, which is concerned with political union. It spells out what is going on and refers to
the ongoing transfer of tasks to the Community and the corresponding increase in the power and responsibilities of its institutions.
Nothing could be clearer than that.
On the question of economic and monetary union, I recall the time when Lord Cockfield appeared before a Select Committee. Those who have heard the noble Lord expound on the subject of the single market will not quickly forget his replies—I was about to say lectures—to questions asked at Select Committee meetings. He is an experienced and fascinating man to listen to. After he had been expounding on the subject to a Select Committee at which I was present, he was asked, in effect, "Surely the man on the Clapham omnibus or the lady on the Stuttgart tram says that this is a Government of bankers, by bankers for bankers—how would you reply to that?" I hope that I do Lord Cockfield no injustice when I say that he replied, in effect, "Bankers are stable, common-sense, useful people." But that is not what government is about.
It was once said in a famous speech made a long way from Brussels that government should be of the people, by the people, for the people. If this House were to disappear from the United Kingdom, that form of government would not vanish from the earth. People throughout the world want that type of government and they are attempting to create institutions which we in the United Kingdom have evolved, developed and practised for a long time. There is a danger—we can debate how great it is—that that form of government could perish from the United Kingdom and, therefore, from the institution in which we are now seated discussing these matters. Through lack of knowledge, it could perish by the votes of those who are Members of the Chamber which gave it birth.

Mr. William Cash: Many people are cynical about whether scrutiny can operate. That being so, it is up to those who have the opportunity to indulge in scrutiny to make sure that it works. That is what this House has been about for as long as history books have been written. It has been up to the House from time to time over the centuries—in relation to many matters, taking one century with another—to deal with issues that are every bit as significant as those that confront us today in relation to the European Community.
There have been times over the centuries when the House has taken stock of the situation and has made sure that it exercises the supervision—scrutiny and control—that is necessary, given the realities of the circumstances in which that generation has found itself.
The Scrutiny Committee has done a better job than many people believe. For example, on 25 June last there appeared in The House Magazine—described rightly, because it is a first-class magazine, as
The most widely read magazine in Parliament
an article—focusing on Europe, under the heading, "Europe—meaning of unity."
Several hon. Members have referred to the relationship between MPs and MEPs. I make no bones about the fact that, so long as we apply the notion of subsidiarity in the sense in which I interpret it—which is that the European Parliament remains subsidiary to the national Parliament


on important questions such as we are discussing tonight—there is a case for ensuring cross-reference between ourselves and MEPs. We keep them in touch and discuss matters with them. There is nothing to stop us doing that, and we should do it.
The article referred to what Lord Bethell MEP described as "an important political issue." He was talking about saving the British sausage and said, making what he obviously believed to be a serious point:
What is the House of Commons doing about all this? The civil servants are hard at work on it. The European Parliament will soon have it in committee. But, as far as I know, the House of Commons is doing nothing. A £500-million-a-year British industry is at stake and the MPs Scrutiny Committee does not have it on board.
After saying,
This is what is meant by the 'democratic deficit'",
he said, referring to our activities as Members of Parliament:
the MPs will wait until the whole thing is sprung on them as a very unpleasant surprise, involving jobs in their constituencies.
There are many butchers and people involved in the meat trade in my constituency. I live in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill), who knows more about the subject than the rest of us put together. The matter was raised in the Scrutiny Committee some months ago. I pressed for it to be thoroughly considered and said that we should acquire information which only certain people could provide for us so that we could have a proper and well-informed debate on the subject in the House, and perform our functions as a Scrutiny Committee and a scrutinising Parliament.
It would have been helpful if the degree of complementarity had been extended to Lord Bethell, discovering what was going on in this Parliament because we are well ahead of the game—I say that without wishing to be unkind to the noble Lord. The evidence that we have accumulated will have a significant impact on the way in which that legislation develops.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: How?

Mr. Cash: My hon. Friend asks how, and I shall explain. When one considers legislation in the House, of whatever kind, whether domestic or European, it is up to us to do so early enough and to take appropriate steps to ask the right questions. My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) is a most valiant defender of the process precisely because he always asks the sort of questions that are highly relevant to finding out the truth—I admire him for that. It is essential that we do the same with European legislation and use the opportunity to ask the right questions early enough.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East would be right to say to me, "We have not been doing that very well so far." I would dispute that, because I think that we have on a number of occasions, but that does not alter the fact that it is the function of this debate and the report produced by my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery) to improve the scrutiny process in the context of the developments that have been taking place in the Community. Therefore, in a sense, this is an exercise of scrutiny about scrutiny.
The remedy lies with us. We must make it our business to find out what is going on at an earlier stage. I got hold of the Christopherson paper produced for the Ashford castle meeting on economic monetary union seven days

before the meeting. It gave most important information about what was being decided and discussed at that meeting in relation to economic and monetary union. I do not claim any great credit for that. I simply felt that I was doing my job and made it my business to find out about the issue because it was so essential to the on-going debate on economic and monetary union. I raised the matter in the Select Committee. It is important that we should all be vigilant.
The vast range and impact of legislation going through the European system necessitates our improving the scrutiny process for the good reason that, during the past several years the volume of legislation from the European Community, which has a direct impact on all our constituents, has grown enormously. The volume of domestic legislation often seems utterly irrelevant in comparison with the impact of that coming from Europe. The volume of, and time we spend on, legislation should be proportionate to the impact it has on our constituents.
We must also look carefully at legislation coming from other national Parliaments, and its impact on us. There should be a much more level playing field with regard to the manner in which legislation is scrutinised in other countries and here. Recently, we had a meeting with the Bundestag European affairs committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Honiton spoke about which way the other European member states scrutinise their legislation. There is no doubt that we legislate and scrutinise our legislation in a better, more comprehensive way, through our Select Committee system, than do most of the other member states. As developments take place in the European Community, it is essential that we do everything we can to talk to the other national parliamentarians to persuade them to engage in the same sort of scrutiny as this debate provides.

Sir Russell Johnston: I apologise for not being present when the Leader of the House opened the debate. I was conducting a radio interview about the death of Bob Carvel. The House has lost someone who was not only a remarkable journalist, but a good man and lovable critic whom we shall all miss.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Procedure, for the work that his Committee has done. Time, as always, is limited, so the main part of my speech will consist of five general points. First, one factor that clearly emerges from the report is that the Government, while claiming to be great defenders of Parliament—as they frequently do—against the erosion of the terrible powers from Brussels that are about to clasp us in their bureaucratic arms, have made no serious attempt to give Members of Parliament a real, effective and timely opportunity to contribute views on European policy as it is formed. The position is contradictory and not easily defended.
The Government say that they will do better. Whenever the Leader of the House says anything, I am always seduced by his cuddliness and evident good nature.

Mr. Tony Banks: He is a right old pushover.

Sir Russell Johnston: Yes, the right hon. and learned Gentleman is an absolute pushover, but time will tell.
Secondly, this position is hardly surprising, since this is not the way that Parliament works anyway. We are essentially a Parliament, after the event, and respond to things once they have happened. As Lord Hailsham said, we respond to the elective dictatorship in our midst. We inveigh against, condemn and vote against it. It seems pretty intellectually indefensible to argue that Parliament should have a pre-legislative role only in respect of European legislation, when our procedures and customs—one might say rituals—deny us that in relation to domestic legislation. In the jargon of the day, I do not think that one can build a ring fence around European legislation, because there is too much overlap.
Thirdly, the report of the Select Committee on Procedure refers more than once, understandably, to the problem of finding time to deal with everything. I intervened in the speech of the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) to remind him of what the House did last night. We spent an hour after midnight, when everybody was tired and should have been tucked up in bed, engaged in voting—an entirely pointless and vacuous activity with no relevance whatever. It simply exhausted people and the time could have been spent in positive activities, such as thinking, writing or scrutinising. No doubt some hon. Members slept late this morning and those who did not will have been less effective today. The hon. Member for Copeland is a decent chap and mounted a defence which might be described in chess as the Cunningham diversion. He said that such voting formed part of the way in which this place was run, but I do not think that he believed that himself.
Fourthly, the Community is already quasi-federal in its construction. We must face that. The citizen has two routes to express an opinion on European legislation. First, he can go to Westminster in the hope of influencing the Minister, who in turn may influence the Council of Ministers. Secondly, he may go to his MEP and hope to exercise some influence through the European Parliament. We must not focus too much on our status as an institution. The issue is about how our citizens can be best enabled to have their opinions heard and their interests taken into account.
The Government prevaricate about facilities to phone the Community, and that is negative. The hon. Member for Copeland spoke about that and the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) intervened and elicited from him a clear view. I do not know what the Services Committee can dig up that we do not know already. We have been in the European Community since 1973 and have known about these things for a long time. The Government should extend to the Community institutions the free phone facilities that hon. Members enjoy in the United Kingdom. After all, hon. Members would not phone Brussels for fun. I do not pick up the phone to amuse myself but in order timeously to register constituency concerns.
I have a strong feeling that my fifth point falls into the category of crying at the moon, but I shall make it anyway. We regularly congratulate ourselves on being members of a rather unique debating Chamber, a place which is unlike the continental chambers that the hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) dislikes and where every so often there is a series of set speeches. That does not lead to

the interplay and the give and take of debate that we expect in this place. However, we have less to be proud of than we assert.
Let us look at the form of winding-up speeches. I am not sure whether the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Sainsbury), who is in the Chamber, will make the winding-up speech in this debate. Such a speech usually falls into three parts. In part one the Minister runs through the names of the Members who have spoken and says, "My hon. Friend the Member for Bloghampton, South made a fascinating and important contribution. My right hon. Friend the Member for Little Significance, North would not expect me to be over-precise in responding to his question. Turning to the Opposition, the hon. Member for Utopia, Central, made an interesting speech but it did not seem entirely to accord with my reading of his party's constitution. The Liberal party Member for Elysium with Nirvana further demonstrated his long separation from power"—and so on. One can make such speeches quite easily.
Part two of the winding-up speech is usually longer and sets out somewhat less than objectively the rectitude of the Government's position. Part three, which runs into the peroration, unequivocally damns all the persons, spokesmen, works, ideas and shibboleths connected with the official Opposition and says that they must be dismissed. It is easy not to fit into that formula. For example, federalism is central to the European debate and is espoused not only by British Liberals but by German socialists and Italian Christian Democrats. However, because it is not the policy of the Government or of the official Opposition, we do not debate it in a proper way. The House is not always good at debating ideas. We debate only major party attitudes, and I am afraid that we do that only in a confrontational way. We should spend more time dealing with arguments, and if we made the effort we could do that.
Having made those general points I shall conclude with specific references to the Select Committee's report and the Government's response. I am greatly impressed by the phrase "the Government will respond sympathetically." I have heard it many times and, although it sounds smooth and emollient, alas, such a response does not always come to pass.
Recommendation 3 deals with the availability of documents. There is no good reason why such availability should not be agreed. The Government aften regard documents as confidential and keep them close to their chest until the last minute.
I do not agree with the Committee or the Government about a separate European Community question time. There should be a slot for that during Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs questions. That matter should be reconsidered, and in that context I have the agreement of the Chairman of the Scrutiny Committee, the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing).
I am worried about more committees being established. At a certain point the burden on hon. Members becomes so great that the opportunity to challenge the Executive is reduced, although in theory this is what it is supposed to be for. I lean towards some sort of open Grand Committee rather than more Committees which hon. Members would have to man.
In future, the detail of European legislation will be dealt with in the European Parliament and not here. We shall


have to concentrate on broad Second Reading principles. The Scrutiny Committee is unquestionably hard working and its Chairman is a paragon of diligence, but I do not think that the Committee has succeeded in changing anything. The Leader of the House said that two thirds of European debates will go upstairs and the other third will take place here, probably at an inappropriate hour. If that happens, it will not be much of an improvement.

Mr. Spearing: I think that the hon. Gentleman's kind remarks about me are unjustified. The staff and members of the Committee are also involved in its work. It is not the task of the Scrutiny Committee to change or to influence the Government. Its job is to ensure that there is an opportunity for hon. Members to influence and press the Government before decisions are taken in Brussels. The Committee is procedural and provides opportunities. It is the members, in the motions and the amendments to motions that they table, who influence the Government's activities. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will consider that.

Sir Russell Johnston: The hon. Gentleman is not only diligent but modest. What he says is true, but at the end of the day, if the Committee is worried about something, it points it up and in that sense seeks some change to be effected.
Fourthly, there is not enough about the European Parliament in the document. The House has taken the wrong approach to the European Parliament. I do not intend to argue about the balance of power, but I agree with the hon. Member for Copeland who, speaking on behalf of the Labour party, said that our relationship should be co-operative. Could we at least open the door to its members? If we do not let them into the Chamber—I would not exclude their admission under certain thought-out circumstances—we can at least let them into the Dining Room. As the hon. Gentleman said, we should give them somewhere to sit upstairs. In short, we should treat them in as civilised a way as they treat us when we visit them.
I conclude by picking up something that the Leader of the House said towards the end of his speech. He said:
Britain wants to maximise its influence within the EC.
That expresses the issue in the wrong way. What he means is that the Government want to maximise their influence in the EC. The proper objective is to maximise the influence of the individual British citizen in the EC. That should be our aim.
I am a Liberal, a minority person. I have long experience of the consequences of what I think to be unfair representation in this place. The total exclusion of Liberal Democrats from the European Parliament is not simply wrong but stupidly excludes a valid British standpoint from expression there. The view of Britain is not just the view of the Government. It finds reflection in the various views of its individual people, and to give that expression must be the objective of what we are seeking to introduce.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: I understand that there is a tradition in the House of Commons that hon. Members do not make savage personal attacks on other hon. Members when they are not present and have not been given notice of the intention to do so. Therefore, I find it difficult to refer to the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery) who, unfortunately, is no longer here.
But, Madam Deputy Speaker, I think that you will agree that to describe our late-night debates on European measures as useless, pointless, sterile and simply battling over the past is not a fair reflection of those constructive debates in which people with special knowledge discuss the issues.
It is interesting that the people who laugh about those debates are the people who never attend them. None of the 10 Members of that great Procedure Committee is here tonight to discuss their great proposals, and of those 10 great Members I recall only—

Mr. Campbell-Savours: I am here.

Mr. Taylor: My apologies to the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Tony Banks: I am here too.

Mr. Taylor: I apologise. I have a list of 10 names and if the hon. Gentleman was a member of the Committee he has not been recorded as being present.
To refer to our debates in that way is rather unfair. The Select Committee's proposals for the consideration of EC legislation are of no real significance. The Select Committee and the House have no powers to do anything about the mass of Euro-laws which come out of Brussels, and the new Committees will also have no power.
In practice, the basic feature of the exciting recommendations is that the general embarrassment caused to the Government by the revelation of certain measures will be reduced. Instead of measures being considered late at night by a small group of difficult and critical Back Benchers, they will be considered by carefully selected Committees which will meet in the morning. Their members will be happy because they will have the power to question Ministers and, through time, they might even acquire the power to travel to Europe and elsewhere to discover more about the issues that they are describing. In effect, nothing will change, save that the Government will be a little less embarrassed and Back Benchers will be able to go to bed a little earlier.
The proposals are simply another example of the policy that we have adopted for years on Euro-matters—simply pretending that reality should be ignored and looking on the brighter side of things. To pretend that we can make the way in which the Community works more democratic is simply kidding ourselves. That is why we have hardly any representation here from the Select Committee and why it has put forward the measures as though they are some exciting new development.
The day-dreaming goes on all the time. We had it this afternoon in that quite splendid statement by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the discussion which stemmed from it. We found agreement almost all over that we should have no surrender and would fight to the death to hold on to what powers we have. But I think that we all knew in our hearts that the power was slipping away all the time.
For example, we found that if the ladies outside tonight, who are so rightly concerned about the rights, liberties and freedoms of ponies and horses come to us, we will be able to do nothing, and if they take the advice of the Liberal party and go to see their MEPs, they will tell them that they passed a unanimous amendment which was sent to the Commission and that a respectable man called Mr. MacSharry threw out their recommendation, so nothing


happened. Democratically, those poor ladies who are so rightly worried about the export of live cattle can do nothing at all.

Mr. Spearing: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that on 11 January this year a Standing Committee considered that matter and the Government moved a motion for which they sought the support of the House which said:
supports the Government in their intention to negotiate a satisfactory welfare standard.
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the Council will not agree to the maintenance of our minimum value export order. But, even more important, is he aware that sections 40 to 49 or the Animal Health Act 1981, which imposed those rules, will be negatived by a regulation, and that the repeal of that Act will not come before the House unless it is directed for agreement to repeal? Therefore, the powers of which he speaks are even greater than perhaps he supposed.

Mr. Taylor: The hon. Gentleman is right. That shows how much democracy is basically disappearing almost completely. For the liberal party, even with its smiling face, to tell people not to worry, because if they cannot do anything the nice people in the European Parliament will be able to, is to mislead people wholeheartedly.

Mr. Dykes: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Taylor: No, my hon. Friend will probably make the point that there are a number of amendments, but that is a load of rubbish because the ones that are accepted are the ones that come from the Commission anyway, as he well knows.
We must not try to pretend that things are what they are not. We talk about free trade in 1992, but we all know that that is basically a joke. For example, we heard today that insurance will be on the basis of free trade, but we know that nothing of the sort is contained in the proposals. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) will support with great rejoicing an EC initiative to spend a great deal of money on the promotion of lower-tar tobacco and the Anti-Cancer Year. I think that will cost about £60 million. Yet we ignore the fact that this year the EC is spending more money than ever on dumping high-tar tobacco on east Europe, Africa and the third world. Such things go on and no one wants to know. Basically, we try to pretend to ourselves that things are being sold. Despite what we are doing, power is going away without our deciding it.

Dr. Norman A. Godman: When the hon. Gentleman debates parliamentary democracy with his constituents, how does he explain the massive indifference shown by hon. Members to these important matters? I remind him that, even on the night that we debated the interim judgment of the president of the European Court of Justice on section 14 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1988, there were very few more souls in this place than there are at the moment.

Mr. Taylor: I well remember that debate, and the hon. Gentleman was present, as he usually is when an important issue is discussed. It was tragic that, when we were tearing up a United Kingdom law for no good reason, only a handful of hon. Members were present.

Difficult, complex and controversial issues are debated late at night or referred to a safe Standing Committee comprised of safe Members who will cause no embarrassment to anyone, but usually with one statutory "difficult" Member included. That is not done because the Government are trying to hide anything from the public, for the same practice would be adopted by a Government of a different party.

Mr. Cash: I am very interested by my hon. Friend's line of argument. The new ad hoc Committees will have the power to ask Ministers to appear before them. Does my hon. Friend agree that, if a Committee has the power also to ask for papers and records, it will be able to get at the root of issues early enough in the day, as I know my hon. Friend would want it to do? Does he really believe that that is possible?

Mr. Taylor: It simply will not be possible. My hon. Friend knows very well that, even if the Committees had the power to ask for every paper and to see very Minister, or, if things got difficult, to send a deputation, at the end of the day they could achieve nothing, because power is slipping away from us. My right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House said that even if some power leaves us, there is still the protection given by the Single European Act, but we know that the Commission is taking unto itself more and more legislation by exercising the majority vote provision in article 100A, and there is nothing we can do about that.

Mr. Dykes: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Taylor: My hon. Friend is being ridiculous.

Mr. Dykes: I am glad that my hon. Friend is giving way at long last. He referred to me a number of times, or at least once. Why does he not have the courage to extend his analysis and say that the logic would be that, if the European Parliament and MEPs had more power, the ladies who came to the House today concerned about the safety and welfare of export animals would be able to work with Members of Parliament and Members of the European Parliament conjointly to achieve the results that my hon. Friend seeks? My hon. Friend is not prepared to admit that the European Parliament should have increased powers and work with national Parliaments.

Mr. Taylor: I never like to give way, because it simply takes up time. Unfortunately, my hon. Friend has a total obsession with the EEC. He knows that there is no way that the European Parliament could take effective powers unless there were a European Government, including a European Foreign Secretary, Transport Secretary, and Minister for Health. To pretend that we are being given new powers of inspection and supervision, and to make proposals, is all kidology. As the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) said, we are kidding ourselves if we try to pretend that we can enhance our democracy.
You heard for yourself, Mr. Deputy Speaker, about the new decision on interim relief. As the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) said, that issue arose a few months ago. The European Court assumed a power—whether or not it had the right to do so we do not know—in respect of interim relief from British laws. A second case arose today. I received a lovely letter from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the


Home Department saying that the German state lottery company is taking action in the British courts that could give it the power to question the validity of the Lotteries and Amusements Act 1976, which prevents lottery tickets from being sold in Britain. It is taking that action on the basis that that legislation contravenes the treaty of Rome. It may be right or wrong, but if that company applies for interim relief, our law will be scrapped for up to two years—and then my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East will have the pleasure of advising his constituents to buy German lottery tickets so that they can help finance the German health service, even though Parliament voted against the running of lotteries in this country.
Let us not pretend that we can solve anything by changing from late night debates to carefully selected Committees that will meet in the morning, and which will appear to be very wise and pontificate but get nowhere at all. Remember the ladies who came to the House today. If any of us had to speak to them, what could we say as democrats? One would have to say, "We can do nothing to protect horses and ponies; nor can the MEPs." Democracy is at risk.

Dr. Godman: I was unable to be present earlier for this debate because I did not leave a Standing Committee until 7.15 pm, but is not the hon. Gentleman being too defeatist? Surely he should be arguing for a change in the structure of the relationship between the European Parliament, national legislatures, the Council of Ministers, and the Commission.

Mr. Taylor: That would be a joke, unless one could establish the basis on which proposals from the Commission are decided by the Council of Ministers. Nothing can be done unless two steps are taken. We are looking at monetary union, and Labour Members talk about the ecu and all the rest of it. If the Opposition's supporters do not like the present Tory Government and their economic policies, they can chuck the Government out. If there is a Labour Government and the electorate feel they are being unfair to Southend or to Scotland, that Government, too, could be chucked out. However, if powers are given to a central bank—as Labour is tempted to do—and it follows economic policies that are bad for Britain and for jobs, or which are unfair by comparison with Germany or France, the public could do nothing.
We should not kid ourselves with silly Committees, because there are only two ways we can go. First, we could adopt what one might loosely call the Ridley plan, saying, "Please do not let us move any further away from democracy. The other European nations can take that path, but we will not follow." Secondly, the next time that the Common Market has no cash, we could impose conditions on extra cash from Britain, and in that way try to introduce some semblance of democracy.
I know that I speak a lot about such issues, but after many years in the House representing people of all political opinions, I find it tragic that we are slowly destroying our democracy. No one seems to notice or to care. That is not being done by a Conservative Government because they are nasty people, but we have the responsibility for starting the whole thing off. Labour does not want to talk about it because it is a changed party now and basically supports the Common Market. The Liberals do not want to talk about it because they were in favour of the Common Market before anyone else.
Rather than blame the Conservatives or Labour, or anyone else, we should try to ensure that our democracy does not fade away. That cannot be done by transferring powers to the European Parliament. That is a joke unless one goes all the way and establishes a European Government. Instead of establishing new Committees and saying that late night debates are useless, and instead of members of the Procedure Committee telling us what to do and then not attending the subsequent debate on their proposals, it will be far better if we look at the basis of democracy in the EEC. It is a big issue, but not a party issue, and it will not go away. We should all consider it.

Mr. Tony Banks: I may tell the hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) that I am a member of the Procedure Committee, so obviously I want to hear the views expressed this evening. I have not listened to every speech, but I shall certainly read Hansard very carefully. The hon. Member for Southend, East appears to be checking the list of the Committee's members. He will find my name among them.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: indicated dissent.

Mr. Banks: I do not know to which document the hon. Gentleman is referring, but if he examines the Select Committee's report, "The Scrutiny of European Legislation", he will see that my name appears first in the list of members, in alphabetical order. Let us assume that the hon. Gentleman is capable of scrutinising EEC legislation more accurately than he is of scrutinising the report of the Select Committee.
The doggedness of the hon. Member for Southend, East is legendary, so it was a little rich of him to accuse the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) of having an obsession with the EC. However, the hon. Gentleman's most important point came at the end of his speech, when he said that if we are to scrutinise EC legislation properly and to give powers to the European Parliament, we would have to move towards adopting a form of federal structure, with a European Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary, and so on. That is precisely the way that we are going. No doubt the hon. Member for Southend, East deplores that fact, as do many hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), to whom I pay tribute for his dogged chairing of the Scrutiny Committee.
I am one of those people who, if they have not precisely had a change of heart about the EC, have been caught up by the developments in eastern Europe, to the extent that I want to see the boundaries of Europe stretch rapidly beyond the narrow limits of the Twelve towards a greater Europe. I like the idea of being a European in a European federal state that stretches from the Atlantic to the Urals—it excites me.
I realise that there is a long way to go before we reach that stage, but, it is the way of the future. I do not need to apologise to the House for the views that I have held about the EC. My opposition to it was, and remains, based on the fact that the EC was essentially an economic and political entity to confront the east. That was the important point about it—it was a political entity which was intended to give western capitalism the greatest


possible firing power when confronting socialism in the east. But there has been such a change in eastern Europe, and that is why I want a wider Europe.
However, a wider Europe has to be democratic. In this place we have the worst of all possible worlds. We have a bureaucratic structure in Brussels that pumps out more and more legislation affecting people in this country. Hon. Members who are elected to look after the interests of their constituents cannot do so any more. I understand exactly what the hon. Member for Southend, East and my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South mean when they complain that power is leaving this place. In the long run that is inevitable, but that does not mean that we should allow power to haemorrhage away. We have to ask how we can control events.

Mr. Christopher Gill: I am interested by the hon. Gentleman's use of the word "power". Surely he agrees that a loss of power only results because we have ceded so much cash to the European Community. So many of the ideals that the hon. Gentleman and many hon. Members on both sides of the House support and admire could be achieved without such an immense transfer of cash to the European Community. It is that transfer of cash to the Community that gives it the power that the hon. Gentleman is now criticising.

Mr. Banks: No, legislative power is the key. My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South will have the budget figures more at his fingertips, but this country's contribution to the EC budget, compared with our total gross national product, is not massively significant. We are talking about legislation, not money, when we talk in terms of power leaving the House.
The other aspect of the EC that makes it so unacceptable to many hon. Members on both sides of the House is that 60 per cent. of the EC budget goes to the common agricultural policy, and it ends up in enormous food mountains in my constituency, where we have an intervention store. I find that obscene, given the proverty in the borough.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: The hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) was talking about the Common Market, and my hon. Friend was referring to money. We have spent about £12 billion on being a member of that outfit since this Prime Minister came to power. She is supposed to have brought back barrel-loads of money from the Common Market, yet it has cost the British taxpayer £12,000 million. That farmer on the Conservative Benches is one of the people who is making money out of it. Every family in Britain contributes £16 a day to the common agricultural policy to line the pockets of the hon. Member for Ludlow and the rest of them.
On top of that there is fraud—about £7 billion of it—or what is known as the "gravy train". God knows how much money they are making out of that, and out of the set-aside scheme for farmers, which is a kind way of saying, "Here's a payment of £80 an acre for farmers to watch the grass grow."

Mr. Banks: When my hon. Friend describes the EC, I could cheerfully kick it to pieces. The scandals in the EC make it such an abhorrent institution to so many hon. Members. But I am trying to argue that we should go

beyond that. The EC is not merely the common agricultural policy—or it should not be—and it is not merely the fraud which is taking place within the 12 states, and which must be stopped. It is so much more than that.
I do not want to talk for long, because I know that many hon. Gentlemen, and perhaps the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman), want to speak, but I must tell the hon. Member for Southend, East that, whether we like it or not, we are in the EC up to our ears. It is a question of where we go from here. Withdrawal from the EC is no longer a viable political objective, or a viable political statement to make. Although withdrawal certainly remains Labour party policy, according to previous manifesto commitments and conference decisions, I do not think that even Labour Members who are most vituperatively opposed to the EC believe that a future Labour Government will take us out of the Common Market.
We have to decide whether we will end up standing on the sidelines, complaining about the erosion of power from this place—which I readily accept is happening—or start doing something about it. We must say that we do not like the EC institutions, but we are going to consider the concept of a wider Europe—we must capture the imagination that flows from people such as Gorbachev and respond in an imaginative way. We must say that we want a peaceful redrawing of the map of Europe which would be one of the most blessed events that any of us could experience in our lifetime—especially as many hon. Members have seen Europe plunged into war at least once this century.
Recommendation 10 of the Select Committee's report is that an oral statement should be made to the House before the Council of Ministers' meeting, and it is important that that be accepted fully. We all feel frustrated when we realise that we are often impotent over EC legislation, and we are not even given the opportunity to voice our opinions before major events take place. In many cases, we are not even given the ample opportunity that we should have to voice our opinions after momentous decisions have been taken.
We must find more time for debate. After all, that is all that the Opposition can do. At least, as the Government control the time of the House and have the majority vote, Conservative Members can do something. As Opposition Members—although we will not be in opposition for much longer, I am glad to say—we have to confine ourselves to going on about legislation that we do not like, whether it is domestic legislation or EC legislation. We can only query decisions that the Prime Minister has made up her mind on and told the House about subsequently.
The more time we have to discuss the major events that are taking place in eastern Europe, the more we shall be able to influence them and the less we shall be regarded as a bunch of whingers, standing at the fringes of Europe wringing our hands and saying, "We do not like what is going on but we shall not throw ourselves enthusiastically into trying to influence future events."
In the end, the Select Committee did not recommend that we should have a special EC Question Time, although I spoke in favour of such a recommendation because I think that we should. The Government are never in the mood to give a Select Committee more than it asks for, so they have naturally endorsed recommendation 15. I think that we should have a specific time for EC questions, as we did until 1985, because questions represent an effective


way of raising issues. It is not necessarily a question of getting answers from Ministers, as Ministers always have the last word and can give us any answer or no answer at all. But questions are fully understood by those outside this place and are an effective way of keeping the Government in check.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Francis Maude): Is there any reason why the hon. Gentleman should not ask EC questions of individual Ministers at their own departmental Question Time? After all, no single Minister has overall responsibility for European Community matters.

Mr. Banks: Of course not, and that is precisely what one does. I suspect that most of today's questions to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food were about the impact of EC legislation on British agriculture, and that is so for all the other Departments. But, with the random selection of questions and the shuffle at 4 o'clock, there is no guarantee that one will find, within the reachable confines of the list of questions, those that directly address EC matters. There is an element of pot luck involved.
We could have sections of Question Time allocated to EC matters or just one general EC Question Time at which all the Ministers were lined up. I understand that that is what happens in the Australian Parliament, where one can ask anything of any Minister at any time. The best thing is to choose the Minister who is nodding off and ask him to answer a question off the top of his head. Usually, the poor soul wakes up to realise that he has been asked a question. No doubt the Government would oppose the idea of having all the Ministers there at once, but the fact remains that questions are a useful way of holding the Government to account, and I am sorry that the Select Committee—of which, I regret, the hon. Member for Southend, East did not realise I am a member—did not recommend that.
I realise that there are divisions on the Opposition Benches, but many of them are more imagined than real. My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South knows more about the EC than I do. When he and I get into a detailed argument, we generally find—after we have cleared away the important minutiae of the way in which the EC operates at present and started to think about the concept of a wider political entity stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals—that we can join hands on the ideal of a socialist United States of Europe. That is the sort of thing that we are looking for and, in the end, that is what history will give us.

Mr. Bowen Wells: First, I wish to pick up the general philosophical point, which most hon. Members have made, that we are concerned about democracy. We want to ensure that constituents, companies and groups throughout the country can influence legislation which they must, by law, obey. I shall concentrate on one aspect of democracy—consent. The idea that has informed our democracy in Britain is that we all have the ability to discuss any proposal that the Executive may place before us, and we agree that when we have debated the matter, the majority will rule and the minority will accept and abide by the majority's decision.
If Europe is to succeed, we must ensure that the same applies there. The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) does not like the European Community, but as we are in it and intend to go ahead with it, he wants to ensure that it is both sucessful and democratic. We must find ways to achieve that aim through this House and, if it is not presumptuous to say so, we must find ways of helping our fellow members of the Economic Community to do the same.
It is alarming to see what happens in Italy. The Italians are well behind in implementing many of the European directives and resolutions that will come into force when the single European market is completed in 1992. The punter in Naples, or further south in Sardinia or Brindisi, has absolutely no idea what his parliamentarians have agreed in Strasbourg or Brussels. Even the parliamentarians who meet in the Italian Parliament in Rome have not considered many of the European directives.
I understand that the directives are all considered and passed once a year on the same day. That means that the ordinary man in the street in Naples will suddenly find himself having to adhere to a law of which he has no knowledge and on which he has been unable to consult Members of his own Parliament, let alone Members of the European Parliament. What will be his reaction when he is told that he must serve fish in one particular way or make sausages in another, or perhaps adhere to European legislation on more important issues?

Mr. Teddy Taylor: He will say, "Get lost."

Mr. Wells: I think that that is true, and if so, it is a dagger at the heart of the European Community and its success. If we all begin to say that, none of the directives or laws of the European Community will be implemented. We shall have massive problems in achieving a European Community governed by the rule of law, consented to by its people and with its member states willing to implement even those laws with which they do not agree.

Mr. Dykes: I realise that this is a generalisation and that there may be variations, but it would seem that in Italy men and women in the street operate directly through their MEPs. My hon. Friend will have noted that, in the European elections in June 1989, the turnout in Italy was 89 per cent., and that 92 per cent. also voted in a referendum for greater European union. There is a general enthusiasm there, which we may not have here.

Mr. Wells: My hon. Friend is entirely right. One of the difficulties in persuading the Italians to take a closer interest in the legislation of the European Community is that there is enormous enthusiasm for the general concept. The same is true in Spain. Those countries do not take an interest in what is actually being proposed. They simply pass the legislation en bloc and say, "Hooray! That is what we joined the Community for." The adherence of the ordinary person in the street to European directives and law is much more widespread in Britain than it is in Italy or Spain because of the procedures, however inadequate, that we have used in this House.
For example, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) has for many years played a valuable role in the Select Committee on European Legislation. We are trying to improve the way in which we deal with European legislation, so as to achieve what my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) wants


—to ensure that we at least are being as democratic as possible. We have not yet achieved that—even with the report.
I wish to refer briefly to the terms of reference and the resolution. As the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) said, taken together they prevent the House from considering anything recommended by the Scrutiny Committee which does not directly refer to a legislative document coming from the Community. We must be able to debate issues that are coming before the European Council which, since the passage of the Single European Act, has become the major policy-making instrument of the Community.
Our Committee must be able to consider those matters, to call for persons and papers if the matter requires it and to make a report to the House to enable the House to discuss matters before the Prime Minister goes to any European Council meetings or before she or other Ministers attend Council of Ministers meetings. We are not in that position and my right hon. and learned Friend's proposal does not make that explicit. He says that he will consider adapting and adopting the terms of reference and the resolution.

Mr. Skinner: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Wells: I would prefer not to.
We must adopt and adapt the resolution of the House and extend the terms of reference of the Select Committee to permit us to have such a debate. When the Madrid Council met, we all knew, because of what had been happening at the European Council meeting at Hamburg, that the questions of European monetary union and of the Delors report would be discussed. The Select Committee considered that, as did the Select Committee on the Treasury and Civil Service. Both Committees presented reports to the House before the Prime Minister was due to take off for Madrid. However, we were unable to command, to recommend or to get the Leader of the House to institute a debate before the Prime Minister departed.
That is a thorough-going undermining of the privileges of the House. Parliament was unable to take a part or to influence or advise the Prime Minister before she made very important decisions on our behalf. Although she came back to tell us what she had done, that is not exactly being accountable to this Parliament. We must put that right. I hope that when my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House considers the terms of reference of the Select Committee on European Legislation and the resolution that follows, he will make certain that the Committee can consider such matters and recommend them for debate.
The setting up of special Standing Committees leave a great deal to be desired. In the debate this evening, other Members, such as the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham), have said that they believe that a European Grand Committee might be the right answer. If we do not get the construction of the proposed three Committees right, we shall need something like a European Grand Committee to do the job for us.
We must consider the membership in detail. On some matters, the new Committees may need members from the relevant Select Committees. Can we therefore appoint the

members of all 10 of the Committees for the whole of a Parliament? Should there not be some core members, the Committees then being added to as the subject matter changes? If we have just three Committees and the subject matter is varied, we shall need other hon. Members in them. It is essential that other hon. Members can attend and speak, and I welcome that suggestion.
How will we staff the Committees? They will need expert and continuing staff so that they can build up the expertise of both staff and regular members of the Committees. No reference has been made to how the committees will be staffed. I suggest that they are staffed at least as well as Select Committees, and possibly better.
Another question that has not been addressed is what the chairmanship will be. Will the Chairman be chosen from the Chairmen's Panel, or will he or she be selected from among the members of the Committee, as is the case for Select Committees? There needs to be a Chairman for the Session, so that he or she builds up expertise in a particular area for the Committee.
I endorse what the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) said about automaticity. It must remain possible for a matter of strong political debate and discussion to be taken on the Floor of the House and not in Committee. The committees would not be a good forum for such debates. We need only 20 hon. Members to be standing in their places to insist that a debate takes place on the Floor of the House, and I recommend that.
The size of the Committees also needs to be considered. I am not certain that 10 is a sufficient number if a Committee is to sit constantly. If the European Legislation Committee is to be given the additional powers to which I have just referred, the number of members must be increased from the present 16.

Sir Peter Emery: My hon. Friend talks about 20 Members being able to ensure that a matter is debated on the Floor of the House, but how often does he think that that might happen? If it is to be a frequent occurrence, we shall return far more to the debates from 10 pm to 11.30 pm that we are trying to avoid. We must achieve a balance between the two.

Mr. Wells: I could not agree more. My hon. Friend is quite right, but the record shows that it is only on rare occasions—I do not think that there has been one in this Parliament—that 20 hon. Members have risen to insist on a debate on the Floor of the House when a matter has been proposed for reference to a Committee.

Mr. Skinner: There is a problem about time in this place and about fitting in the agenda. The Common Market gets pushed to the back because the Government know only a few hon. Members on either side of the argument take part in the debates, and most are anti-market.
Another part of the agenda, called the private Bill procedure, has been increasingly used—in fact, it has been abused. We have a private Bill almost every week. In my time in the House—you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will confirm this—the procedure has been growing apace. We could adopt the report on the private Bill procedure which recommends that we change it and make promoters go back to planning authorities to get permission for port Bills and so forth. There is another private Bill on Monday. There are three hours in the palm of the


Chairman of Ways and Means. Without private Bills, we could have Common Market debates on the various issues and we might be able to have six or eight a year.
The hon. Gentleman spoke of telling the Prime Minister what to do before she went to a meeting. I know that he is not after a knighthood. If he were, and he told the Prime Minister what to do, he could forget the knighthood and the peerage because she will chop his legs off.

Mr. Wells: I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that the question of a knighthood has long since gone. I have already tried the procedures that he has suggested and been rejected. None the less, I will continue to give my right hon. Friend advice.
Whether we shall have more debates on the Floor of the House is a matter of time. We should have most of the debates in the enhanced Committees, but there should be a relatively easy way to override the normal direction and ensure that debates are held on the Floor of the House. Politically contentious matters are properly dealt with on the Floor of the House.
Brief mention has been made of the special Standing Committees and whether Ministers and shadow Ministers should be members of those Committees. That matter must be addressed, especially when important legislative matters are being considered. I remember when my hon. Friend the Minister, when he was at the Department of Trade and Industry, used the procedures of the House to influence the debate in the European Parliament by ensuring that we had debates here on, for example, the insurance directive, well in advance.
I remember when my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Mr. Lilley) arranged early debates which were read by the Commission and which strengthened the negotiating hand of my hon. Friend in the Council of Ministers. That early use of debates in the Chamber should overcome the pessimism of my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor). If we use the procedures and set up the Committees properly, it is possible to influence the course of events and the legislation which goes through the European Parliament.
We should give serious consideration to offering membership of the special Standing Committees to European Members of Parliament. We have been unable to get European Members of Parliament informally to attend the European Legislation Committee because that involves procedures within the European Parliament as to who should be sent and whether only British Members of the European Parliament should attend the British Parliament. Sometimes the European Parliament gets in a muddle and suggests that its spokesman on a particular subject should be sent to the British Parliament. I believe that instead of approaching the European Parliament we should offer membership of our Committees dealing with European matters directly to European Members of Parliament. Perhaps they should not be able to vote in those Committees, but they should be invited to attend them.
In conclusion, as my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary suggested, we have to develop the European Parliament to check the Commission and to make the Commission accountable to the European Parliament. In that connection, our Ministers have had to accept a Commission decision in relation to today's statement on British Aerospace. But who is to bring the Commission to account? Where is the Committee which examines the

Commission as to how and why it took that decision? At the moment the Commission is not subject to such examination. The European Parliament should do that job.
Equally, our national Parliament should be related directly to the Council of Ministers. Procedures such as those that we are debating today can bring our Ministers to account. If all the national Parliaments represented at the Council of Ministers did that, we should begin to regain democratic control over Community institutions. It is vital that we continue to strive to make Europe the democratic organisation that we all want it to be.

Mr. Harry Barnes: It might be too dramatic to say that we are discussing the future of the House of Commons, although my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) spoke about the combined future of eastern and western Europe. however, the documents that we are considering deal with some aspects of the future framework of the House of Commons.
At one time, one could say that Britain did not have a constitution and was dependent on its past statutes. Nothing was binding for the future, as the House could change the law. However, the treaty of Rome, the Single European Act and other measures that have flowed from the operation of the treaty of Rome make that argument no longer feasible. Although we cannot bind the future, our treaty obligations, the decisions of the European Commission and the deals and discussions within the Council of Ministers can bind our future and limit the power of the House. The more we bed down into the European Community, the greater the legislative restrictions that bear down upon us. The saga of the Spanish fishermen is merely the beginning and is a logical consequence of our entry into the European Community.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West, who said that we were in the worst of all possible worlds in regard to the European Community institutions. We do not have democratic provisions, so the democratic bandwagons must move either towards pan-European democracy and a reformed Europe, or towards trying to return sovereignty to the House and to remove those restrictions. It is not always easy to see which alternative is the most feasible.
The Government's response to the documents from the Procedure Committee and from the Scrutiny Committee was fairly grudging, especially on matters concerning democracy, scrutiny examination and knowledge. Democracy does not involve simply formal legislative decision-making and democratic rights and procedures. Knowledge and information build upon democratic rights and procedures, and remain important.
Some of the current developments in Britain are anti-democratic. The ancient right of petitioning, which existed long before the democratic franchise, has acquired greater significance as it is being eroded. Sometimes the weaker aspects of democracy need to be defended to advance the democratic process. That is why the reports that we are considering are not futile. They should not be disregarded, as they provide levers and avenues by which to extend understanding, which is an important part of democratic procedures.
The Government's response was not in keeping with the spirit of the report by the Scrutiny Committee and the Procedure Committee. The Government's clearest responses to the Procedure Committee dismissed certain proposals or made negative ones. The Procedure Committee said that there should be no change in Question Time and the Government agreed. I believe that the Procedure Committee and the Government are entirely wrong. The Scrutiny Committee suggested that there should be slots, and other proposals have also been put forward.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West suggested the Australian pattern in which Members could question several Ministers. That system also operates in Canada where the Opposition ask the questions and the Ministers decide among themselves who should respond to each question. That is not necessarily better than our system, but it could operate for European Community questions by having all the relevant Ministers present and open questioning as we have in Prime Minister's Question Time.
The Government agreed with the Procedure Committee in dismissing some proposals and endorsed its rejection of others. There is to be no European Community Grand Committee as that proposal was rejected by the Procedure Committee and the Government jumped on that bandwagon. They seem to have reached a compromise on the proposal that one European Grand Committee should deal with all European affairs and the suggestion from the Procedure Committee that there should be five special Standing Committees. The Government agreed that there should be three Committees. That resembles their compromise on whether we should be out of the European Community or be part of a grand pan-European democratic structure. The result is a bureaucratic, undemocratic system which is deemed to deal with unitary control from the centre and on which we have few democratic checks.
I could mention other aspects of the Government's response which are negative. It was suggested that there should be no formal links with MEPs and the Government agreed with that. The Government accepted certain proposals only with qualifications as they hummed and hah-ed over various proposals. They accepted extending the Committees' terms of reference but then stated that that should be strictly in relation to deposited documents and that there should be no free-standing studies on broad policy issues. However the Leader of the House suggested that there might be some discussion on broadening the terms of reference to make them more acceptable to the Scrutiny Committee than had ever been imagined.
The language of the Government's response is not very inspiring. The Government tend to say, "We are already doing many of the things that have been suggested." When more documents are requested by a Committee, they say, "We have been doing this for a while. You can trust us." It is partly because there has been no trust in the procedures and partly because the Executive are tied in with the activities in Europe that reports such as this have been prepared.
The report suggests that there should be business-type statements to allow general discussion to take place. The Government reject that. The proposal made by the

Procedure Committee for automatic referral to the new special Standing Committees, which the Scrutiny Committee does not like, suggests that 40 hon. Members standing in their place should be able to force a debate on the Floor of the House. The Scrutiny Committee says that 20 hon. Members is appropriate. We can argue whether 20 or 40 is appropriate, but, whatever the figure, it gives hon. Members the opportunity of some control on significant measures.
If the procedures that are adopted lead to greater knowledge of European affairs, more hon. Members will want to say to the Government, for example, "You are wrong about the recommendations from the Scrutiny Committee, and there are enough of us to force a debate on the Floor of the House."
Other parts of the report are acceptable and are in line with the recommendations made by the Procedure Committee. They are not of staggering significance, but they will be worth while. Business statements will mention special Standing Committee meetings so that hon. Members are aware of them. But when business statements are made, most hon. Members ask a prepared question and say, "Why will not this, that or the other be discussed this week?"
The report mentions how pressure groups will be able to scrutinise parliamentary activity and inform hon. Members what is taking place. That adds to the checks and balances of a democratic system.
Given the problems, it is little wonder that the Scrutiny Committee has said that it is looking for changes to its terms of reference that are not merely cosmetic. It hopes that its recommendations about pre-legislative documents being available will be accepted in a positive spirit, and it rejects automatic referral to the new Committees and stresses the point quite strongly.
What should the House do about these measures? Paragraph 117 of the report shows what is required, mentions the volume of work and
the fact that a small number of documents continue to be adopted before scrutiny is complete; the ineffectiveness of late night debates on European documents; and the impact of the increased use of majority voting on individual member states' ability to block legislation to which they are opposed.
It acknowledges
the inevitable constraints imposed by the United Kingdom's treaty commitments on the House's ability to improve the effectiveness of scrutiny and the corresponding need to approach the subject with realistically modest expectations.
That paragraph shows what will be required in terms of information, knowledge and understanding to enable hon. Members at least to check what is taking place elsewhere.
The issue of democratising Europe is much wider than the issue in front of us. It might be suggested that the report proposes rather nit-picking and insignificant measures. That is not so, and must run with what is available. If we do that, we may begin to open many wider issues. Luckily, democracy is not just about formal voting procedures, the right to vote or other legislative avenues; other aspects are associated with it. The principal aspects are the formal arrangements and, whether they are being attacked in Europe or in this country, we must consider them closely.
I hope that hon. Members who have spoken strongly about democracy will pay some attention to what is happening in this country, such as the disfranchisement of


many people. About 600,000 people are missing from the electoral roll. That is an important point to make, even if it is not immediately relevant to the debate.

Mr. Alan Haselhurst: As the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) moved towards the end of his remarks, I found myself in more agreement with him than I had been at the beginning, although he ended on a note with which I am not immediately sympathetic. The hon. Gentleman was unfair to accuse the Government of being grudging in their response to the report of the Select Committee on Procedure. Rather, the hon. Gentleman was grudging about the report and the commentary of my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House on it.
The Procedure Committee recommended what it believed to be the right approach—an all-party Committee—and the Government seem to have made a generous response to the report. We should be grateful for that and for this debate. I hope that it will be the first of a series of debates. We cannot consider only the issues disclosed by the report and those that have been tagged on to it in the debate, in the belief that we can settle them in one series of discussions with Government, produce new procedures and that we shall be all right for the next 10 or 20 years. Clearly we will not be, because events are moving very fast.
The characteristic of the scrutiny offered by the Select Committee on European Legislation is that it is very meticulous but highly restrictive. We are confined to a somewhat blinkered approach. We have the document and nothing but the document, unless, by a sidelong glance, it is yet another document that we can link to it. That role is too suffocating for the Committee.
I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House will not accuse me of ingratitude if I concentrate on the points on which I disagree with the Government's response, because I acknowledge that there has been a welcome move by the Government to realise that more must be done to improve the scrutiny of European legislation. I am delighted that the Government are willing to move on the terms of reference, but I am disappointed that apparently they are not prepared to move far enough.
My right hon. and learned Friend said that he was introducing some modest measures. I should like to persuade him to be immodest. I do not invite him to make a major change because the Scrutiny Committee is not seeking that. However, we need to break the link with documents. If we cannot do that, our role will continue to be stultified. If I heard my right hon. and learned Friend correctly, he said that in the process of scrutiny we should be trying to focus on the new issues that should concern the House. The Scrutiny Committee would like to have that role. For example, two important intergovernmental conferences were agreed at the Dublin summit. However, we will not be allowed to comment on those.
The Select Committee on European Legislation's second special report of the 1985–86 Session—and the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), has already referred to it—stated:
as a Scrutiny Committee, we were never able to report on the Act"—
the Single European Act—
or on the Inter-Governmental Conference held in accordance with the Treaty in autumn 1985 which produced

it, because both were outside our terms of reference. A similar situation has occurred from time to time in the budgetary affairs of the Community, when an Inter-Governmental Agreement has been used to supplement Community funds.
We will be similarly confined as other events occur.
In their response to the Procedure Committee, the Government appear to be worried by the thought that the Scrutiny Committee might become involved in
free-standing studies of broad policy issues which might tend to duplicate the work of other Committees.
Let me reassure my right hon. and learned Friend: we want only a modest extension of our role. Would he consider a quota which might be allocated to us of special investigations that we might carry out?
Let us experiment. There is a spirit of experimentation infusing some aspects of the Government's response to the Procedure Committee. Why cannot that spirit of experimentation overflow into this area as well? If it does not work, or if—perish the thought—the Government are uncomfortable with the product of an investigation by the Scrutiny Committee, the Leader of the House can come back to the House and tell us that it is not working and that he wants to suggest another change. However, let us experiment. We should not adopt the attitude at the outset that there cannot be any change.

Mr. Spearing: I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman has said. However, I believe that his case about quotas is even stronger than he is making it. Does he recall that in the year to which he referred an arrangement had been reached with the Select Committees that, if they did not want to consider a particular matter, there was no reason why an enlarged preference for our Scrutiny Committee could not be used to investigate that matter? Without such a power, there is a visible gap in Select Committee investigations.

Mr. Haselhurst: I was trying not to be too immodest in the proposal that I was putting before my right hon. and learned Friend. If the Government are concerned about the Scrutiny Committee spreading its wings, is it really wrong to suggest that it should be allowed to flutter them a little? Let us see how such a modest extension of the role, perhaps on a quota basis, would work out. That is an essential move if scrutiny is to take on a more comprehensive meaning.
I support the Scrutiny Committee's view about the special European Standing Committees and the power of referral. I suggest that the Government should see how we get on with the new European Standing Committees before they reach a final view on automatic referral. They should step back from that proposal at the moment. Let us run the new Committees for a year and see how the system works. If it goes wrong, the Government's case is made and the House will no doubt accept their view. However, they should not press the matter before we have seen how the new Committees work.
I endorse my colleagues' opinion that we should accept the Procedure Committee's view and have five of those Committees. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery), I believe that the burden on three Committees would be too much. It would be wise to spread the load and see how we go. I understand the problem about whether hon. Members will turn up to the Committees. It is a matter of how seriously the House as a whole believes that the job must be taken.
I do not want to sound too censorious, but in some ways the tone is set by the Government. If there is any


feeling of ambivalence about the Government's commitment, some hon. Members might not believe that this is the most important thing that the House can be doing. It is clear from everyone who has spoken today, particularly from those who are most hostile to the Community, that there is a realisation that the process must be taken seriously and that, if we are to make a success of scrutiny, we must all be committed to it.
As I said, the tone must be set by the Government. However, I do not believe that those who are still fighting in principle the battle of 1971 are doing much good. They are not helping to develop a serious approach to scrutiny in the House. They are not helping us move on to more effective control of European legislation. They intone about the solemnity of this Parliament, but what is Parliament but the embodiment of the will of the people? The will of the people has been determined on the matter of whether we should be involved in the European Community. They should trust what the people have decided and put those arguments behind them.
In the spirit of experiment, I hope that the Government, after they have reflected on this debate, will follow the Procedure Committee's recommendations. I want to refer to several minor points. They are minor in comparison to the Procedure Committee's recommendations, and they are dealt with in what amount to footnotes in the report.
I endorse what the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) said about the use of telephones. He made his point very well and we must pay attention to it. I am glad that the Services Committee has been asked to consider that matter, and I hope that we will have positive and not grudging action.
With regard to the relationship with Members of the European Parliament, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells). Perhaps the new European Standing Committees will be the vehicles by which MEPs are introduced into our proceedings. The Procedure Committee said that that would require primary legislation. If that is so, we should face up to it. If we are taking scrutiny seriously, perhaps we should have a little primary legislation. If primary legislation will strengthen the role of this House, we would not make a meal of it; let us get on with it. It is just possible that the creation of the new Committees could evolve to allow in MEPs in certain prescribed circumstances. That would help us to liaise effectively on the whole question of scrutiny.
A point was made earlier about travel. I would not necessarily want to go as far as the suggestion of the hon. Member for Copeland that individual Members should have the right to travel. I am not unsympathetic to what he said, but I said to myself in parenthesis that to call for individual hon. Members to have the right to travel on the continent when currently it is proposed to tax them on travelling within their own constituency seems a bold call. If we cannot go as far as the hon. Member for Copeland suggested, perhaps we should consider special arrangements for the Scrutiny Committee.

Mr. Robertson: I was waiting to see whether the hon. Gentleman would confine the largesse to members of the Committee. Many of them are in the Chamber tonight. With regard to the taxation of benefits and the threat that all travel by hon. Members will come within the tax net, I

wonder whether there would be more enthusiasm for taxing hon. Members' travel in their constituencies if Ministers' cars were treated on the same basis.

Mr. Haselhurst: I gave way to the hon. Gentleman in a spirit of good will—I have a great deal of respect for him—but it was clearly a mistake. He pursued the parenthesis that I had embarked on. I do not wish to be drawn any further on it.
The hon. Gentleman anticipated me. I was about to suggest that a more modest proposal than to allow everyone to travel on the continent would be to adjust the terms affecting the Scrutiny Committee. I do not suggest that out of any selfish reason. I simply wish to put it on record that the Scrutiny Committee needs to travel within Europe to a degree to do the job with which it is charged. It is not a matter of the Committee deciding, for example, that it needs to study how the dairy industry in New Zealand is faring. The Committee must meet the European Parliament, the Commission, and the United Kingdom permanent representative in Brussels and liase with parliamentarians in countries which are about to hold the presidency. That is a modest proposal.
It would be helpful to keep the expense of the Scrutiny Committee's travel apart from the normal expenses of the departmental Select Committees. By implication, we should have to include in that the members of the European Standing Committees.

Mr. Dykes: My hon. Friend makes an important point. He seems to suggest that members of the Scrutiny Committee are no longer nervous about going abroad and meeting foreigners, that they feel much more at ease when they do and that those journeys can no longer be classified in conventional terms as visits abroad because we go to the Community and meet other parliamentarians. Does he agree that his suggestions are even more relevant and unavoidable in the context of the European Parliament's response to various initiatives? The assizes in Italy are coming up in the autumn and other developments are going ahead fast. It appears that the European Parliament will respond positively to the idea of receiving Scrutiny Committees from national Parliaments in a formal sense on regular visits and, indeed, individual members of the Committee when they visit the Strasbourg Parliament. Would he encourage that process, too?

Mr. Haselhurst: I hear what my hon. Friend says. I would certainly encourage that process. We must recognise that we are part of the Community. We ought occasionally to be seen in other parts of it if we are to appear a credible force and be taken seriously when perhaps we object to some aspects of developments with which the majority of our colleagues in the Community agree. We must be seen as serious players in the game. That does not just mean Heads of Government and Ministers. Increasingly, Members of this House must be seen abroad. Those who lament the loss of power of this House should heed the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes).
The ever-closer union of the European peoples is coming ever closer, whether it is perceived to be inching towards us or galloping towards us. It will happen. Those who worry that that takes away the sovereignty and power of this Parliament should pause to wonder what power and what sovereignty will be left in this Parliament if Britain stands outside a Community that goes from strength to


strength, whether it stretches from the Atlantic to the Urals or there is merely a modest increase in the present number of member states.
If we are to command proper control of events that will affect the destiny of this country, we must consider our procedure ever more carefully and ever more regularly. I say to my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House, again in a spirit of experiment and flexibility, that if he is prepared to take a few chances with some of the suggestions put to him both by the Procedure Committee and in the debate today, there is no reason why there should not be a supplementary report from the Procedure Committee or the Scrutiny Committee after 12 months. We could then debate the further report.
We have had a useful debate today, but it is unfinished business. We must return to the subject again and again in fast-changing circumstances to ensure that the relationship of this Parliament with other Parliaments of the Community and the European Parliament is as right as it may be.

Mr. Michael Knowles: My hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) made his case in a gentle and kindly way—understanding the Government's point of view—that was illustrative of his character. Perhaps I could put my points more robustly. After all, today's Order Paper refers to "Scrutiny of European Legislation", as does the Select Committee report.
The Government's proposals were very well taken apart by the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes). His criticisms of them were, in my view, absolutely right. My biggest criticism is this: perhaps they are all right if one considers that scrutiny is enough, but I do not.
I am a member of the Select Committee on European Legislation, and agree with its report. I endorse what was said by our Chairman, the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing)—at least in the first part of his speech—but I believe that we should go much further: we must return to the idea of some form of Grand Committee to examine forward policy. At present, any scrutiny policy means looking at a piece of paper that has already been produced; the policy is already well down the path. It is already half committed, and secret deals have been done in the Council before it ever sees the light of day. The problem for the House is that it does not get ahead of the game as far as European policy is concerned. That is the challenge that we must face.
If the Government had introduced their proposals 10 years ago, they would have been fine, but they are not good enough now. We are promised that in the future something will be done about the nonsense of telephoning or posting a letter to anywhere else in the Community. The sums concerned are trivial; hon. Members are more than prepared to pay themselves. However, it betrays an attitude that has not changed, judging by the Government's response to the proposals. We have a major battle to advance an inch, whereas it should be something that happens automatically with virtually no discussion.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am delighted to hear my hon. Friend refer with such enthusiasm to these matters. I want to convey to him the clear impression that the Government would be delighted to press ahead as quickly as possible,

but—until recently—that proved difficult because the attitude to which he has referred lingered in some parts of the House. The Government's attitude is "the quicker the better" in regard to most of these practical and sensible proposals. I would find the general tone of the debate encouraging if it were less critical of the Government.

Mr. Knowles: I understand my right hon. and learned Friend's position. In these matters we are all pushed into role playing: he sits on the Front Bench and defends the Executive, whereas I sit on the Back Bench as a legislator. It is natural that I should wield the tools I have to bring pressure to bear.
When have we debated in the House recent reports from the European Parliament? Recently, there has been the Martin report, which was concerned with where the European Parliament wants to go; the Colombo report—the new draft treaty for European union; the Giscard d'Estaing report on the principle of subsidiarity—we have endless discussions in the House on subsidiarity and federalism, and I recommend that fascinating report on those topics; and the Devuager report and the assizes, which were mentioned in passing earlier. There was an offhand reference to discussions through the usual channels. European Parliaments are supposed to be represented in the assizes, rather than the two Front Benches.
When will the House discuss those matters and who will represent the House in Rome in October? That must be decided within the next month because the House will not return from the recess in time to reach a decision. We need to keep a weather eye on that.

Mr. Haselhurst: Perhaps I could help my hon. Friend by nominating him.

Mr. Knowles: I thank my hon. Friend for that kind thought. At all times he is a kind and generous man.
Some of today's speeches have betrayed the fact that hon. Members have an arrogant attitude towards the European Parliament. It is as though this Parliament were the only representative assembly not only in Europe, but in the world. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) suggested that we did the job of scrutiny so well that the other 11 national Parliaments should copy us—they would then be all right. I find that arrogance stunning. Usually it is preceded by the misquote that this is the mother of Parliaments, but it is England that is supposed to be that mother. I must admit that some of our offspring do much better than us on occasions.
I understand the 19th century classical parliamentary system where members of the Executive sit in the Chamber and answer to the legislature. I understand the separation of powers. The modern British political system is characterised by tight control by the Executive and tight party systems. That means that the Executive virtually controls the legislature. I am not sure that we shall be lecturing other people much longer. The idea that the British system is the best at all times and in all circumstances is remarkable. We should consider the Parliaments of our European partners.
In Denmark, Ministers appear two or three days before a Council of Ministers meeting with the agenda and go through it with the relevant committee so that it has some idea about what will be discussed. That is a vast


improvement on the parliamentary control excercised by the Executive. We can learn from other Parliaments, and we must give up our arrogant attitude.
One of my hon. Friends spoke about checking the Commission. That is right, and the only body to do that is the European Parliament, but who checks the Council of Ministers? At one time, the idea was that national Parliaments checked the Council because every individual Government had the power of veto that came with the Single European Act. Earlier, my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House said that the Council is a legislative chamber, but it is the only one I know in the western world that meets in secret. That is a cause not for pride but for criticism.
We must grapple with the principles that lie behind the arguments on subsidiarity and the federal system. I agree with the hon. Member for Inverness, North and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston). I would rather move to a federal system where powers are delineated so we know where we are. It is also argued that legislatures can control the Executive at two levels. Power has now slipped from the national level, but it has not been acquired at the European level. If we are not careful, the power of scrutiny will not be exercised by either tier.
We must stop looking on our colleagues in the European Parliament as opponents. They are our colleagues and we are in the same business together. Let us get on with that business and ensure that we establish a democratic Europe.

Mr. Christopher Gill: It may not be an exaggeration to say that 1990 may prove to be a watershed in the history of European affairs considering the dramatic events in eastern Europe and the developments within the European Community—demonstrated by the fact that two intergovernmental conferences are planned. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister also made a significant statement this afternoon, which was followed by a most interesting set of exchanges. My right hon. Friend gave us one of the clearest expositions of Britain's position in the EC that the House has yet heard.
This debate is significant for two reasons. First, we are demonstrating that the will of Parliament can be heard. I take issue with the contention of Lord Bethell, who was quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) and who implied that European legislation was not properly scrutinised. It is well known that hon. Members can obtain from the Vote Office a piece of paper—I have a copy of it in my hand—each week which explains practically everything going on in the European Commission. It is possible by that means for hon. Members to appraise themselves of the legislation that is coming to this House and to take steps to ensure that, at some stage of our procedure, it gets adequate consideration.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) was critical of the way in which we consider European legislation. He thought that the pass had been sold and that our deliberations today about change were neither here nor there. I do not regard that as sufficient reasons for not making changes.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Waldon (Mr. Haselhurst) pointed out, if the changes prove insufficient, there is no reason why we should not make further changes later. Like others, I was glad to hear the Leader of the House say that there was no reluctance by the Government to review the situation and perhaps to go faster in future.
The second important feature of the debate is that at last we are sending out the right message to the nation about the importance that we attach to the consideration of European business. For too long, the nation has heard too little about our consideration of such matters, mainly because our debates take place late at night when the press have gone home, so our remarks are not reported in yesterday's or tomorrow's papers, when the radio stations have closed down and when the prospects of getting coverage for our deliberations are slim. As hon. Members have said, our debates often occur at the eleventh hour and we are debating matters in retrospect.
I welcome the positive commitment of the Government to improve the procedures for scrutiny. The proposed changes recognise the realities of the situation, and not before time. While much of what we discuss by way of European legislation and directives is mundane, it includes important issues. There are matters of principle and policy at stake. In addition, much of the legislation, because of practical considerations, is irreversible and takes precedence over national law.
I welcome the determination to debate future events. Looking to the future, it is vital for Britain to make a success of our membership, and to do that we must demonstrate to the country that we have the will power and determination to do what is necessary.
I shall sound a word of caution—the exchange rate mechanism and the European currency unit will not do more for us in this country than we are prepared to do for ourselves. If we want to create sound money—I am sure that we do—lower interest and inflation rates and better exchange rates, those aims are all within our control. No one must run away with the idea that because we join the exchange rate mechanism, those things will be done for us. It depends so much on the political will of this Parliament and House, and the individual will of men and women throughout the country, whether as managers of our industries or members of the work force within industry. We should make no bones about it: competent countries will go ahead within the Community regardless.
I accept that the Council of Ministers will have to remain the main decision-making organisation in the European Community. I have frequently spoken about the importance of protecting the principle of subsidiarity, and I do not intend to speak about that any more this evening.
There was an interesting exchange some time ago involving power and the relationship between the powers of this House and those of the European Community. The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) seemed reluctant to accept that power and cash were inseparable and indivisible components, and that one cannot have power without cash. He implied that legislation could be passed without costing money. I strongly question that. That old-fashioned and outdated idiom that power came out of the barrel of a gun is now a dead letter. That has been epitomised in eastern Europe. Power today, in modern Europe and the modern world, means economic power.
The hon. Member of Newham, North-West said that divisions among Opposition Members in relation to Europe were more apparent than real. Does he really mean that? Where was he this afternoon when we saw the phenomenal spectacle of the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) agreeing with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister? I do not think that it was possible for the Prime Minister to include the Leader of the Opposition in that. No doubt the divisions that the hon. Member for Newham, North-West declines to recognise were recognised by Conservative Members.
The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) intervened on the issue of structural funds—he would because it is an essential plank of socialism to have large central funds that can be dispersed for those purposes that socialist politicians feel that the state can serve best. Socialists support the structural funds; I do not.
The hon. Member for Bolsover also said that that was the means by which farmers lined their pockets. He suggested that agriculture did well out of the structural funds. However, the state of British agriculture today is the poorer as a result of the structural funds. I am certainly not reluctant for the common agricultural policy to be dismantled. I believe—I have said this to the House many times—that structural funds are totally unnecessary in the context of what wer are trying to do in Europe. We can create a prosperous and peaceful Europe without structural funds.
Europe needs us for our pragmatism, our experience, our sense of history and our acceptance of the rule of law. Above all, they need us for our courage. That is well personified by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who is not afraid to say no when unacceptable proposals are put to us.

Mr. Dykes: I shall be brief. The winding-up speeches are awaited with great anticipation because we are anxious to see whether there is a meeting of minds between the Government and the Opposition on the scrutiny proposals. I thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House for the Government's positive response to the suggestions of the Procedure Committee and the Scrutiny Committee. However, I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will reconsider the automatic referral syndrome that is proposed as part of the Government's response, because that would be an extension of the Executive's power over Parliament. That is the kernel of the debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) said, perhaps the matter could be considered in a year or two, depending on how matters turn out.
In the debate there has been a realistic recognition that we are part of the European Community. I was struck by a leader in a newspaper on Sunday which said:
If Britain had been well governed over the decades and had enjoyed decades … of steady economic growth, combined with social harmony, the decision … about our membership would be more difficult. In almost every way our European partners have done better and continue to do better than us.
When my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House was Foreign Secretary, he was acknowledged as an enthusiastic exponent of our membership of the Community. He served Britain well in that role by

defending our interests and recognising the reality of our membership of Europe. That is what the central scrutiny procedure is to be about.
Like other hon. Members, I am pleased that we have got away from pretending that scrutiny is a fringe activity, carried out originally, because for some hon. Members the form and structure of our legislation for entering the Community was controversial. That is why the Foster committee was set up.
I was impressed when the Spanish scrutiny committee approached us after the return of democracy to Spain. Its members said that they would like to speak to us about our work and about how they should proceed in Madrid. One of the terms of reference of the Spanish scrutiny committee in Madrid was "to promote and accelerate the development of the Community in Spain." From memory, those are the exact words. I wish that we had had such self-confidence at the beginning of our membership. However, we approached it in the classic British way which has stood the test of time.
We are all grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery) and to the members of his Committee for their excellent suggestions. I strongly agree with most of them. Unlike some hon. Members, I welcome the Government's response to the idea of individual subject Committees. Whatever the number of such Committees—and I realise that that might cause difficulties—that is a better approach than the Grand Committee idea.
We have now reached the later stage of mature scrutiny and must maximise liaison with our colleagues in the European Parliament. I should like to see Conservative Members liaising with Labour Members and Members from other parties in that Parliament. I agree with the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) that it was unfortunate that we have an election system which produces results judged by other Members of the European Parliament to be monumentally unfair. There are no Liberals in that Parliament. We may have to face that issue and in due course may well decide that for European elections it would be right to have proportional representation, even if we do not change the voting system for election to the House of Commons.
The scrutiny procedures are capable of being highly developed, provided we recognise that the additional layer of political, economic and social activity, which is the European Community layer, is not our enemy but our natural ally. The success of that depends on cross-fertilisation of ideas between the Christian Democrats, the Socialists and the Liberals in the European Parliament and their national equivalents in the Parliaments of member states. They are all struggling and/or working together for the political results that we wish to achieve, not one excluding the other, looking down on the other, describing British MEPs as of no consequence. All those days are now over. We are now into the stage of new realism.
As my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House said with his characteristic humour just now, his chances, as a very good Leader of the House, if I may embarrass him by saying so, of promoting scrutiny in the House are now improved and enhanced because at long last the Labour party, after only 15 or 16 months, has miraculously transformed itself with some exceptions—such as one or two of those elderly hon. Members who questioned my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister today on her statement on the summit, the hon. Member for


Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and others—into a pro-European party for the first time. That has occurred in an extraordinarily short time.
It was the lack of such support which stalled the possibility of proper practical measures of scrutiny, telephone calls, postage and passes for MEPs. Labour Members in the Services Committee and elsewhere would have none of it. They did not want such people here with their continuing theme. I remember that it took several years to extrude a modest system of passes for MEPs. I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend will remember, even then, how grudging Labour Members were at the late-night debate when they conceded that.
Now it is all roses, light and enlightenment for Labour Members. I do not refer to the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) whose views have been consistently enthusiastic. But we shall have to watch closely to see whether that change is more than skin deep in the future. I think that the Conservative party, with the Liberals, will retain their natural monopoly of enthusiasm for the EC, but perhaps Labour will come up to scratch later.
Whatever the case may be, we are now embarked on a much more serious and profound scrutiny procedure, and I hope that we shall have the practical concomitants of that—telephone calls, postage facilities and all the rest which would make that work useful not only for the House and Britain, as the Procedure Committee has recommended, but for every elector, contrary to the anxieties of the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing).

Mr. George Robertson: It is nice to be able to follow the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes), whose opportunism and idealism shine through, despite the fact that he was being glowered at by the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash). There is a much wider gulf between them than the two and a half sword lengths that divide the two sides of the House.
This has been a remarkably even-handed debate, not given to the normal cut and thrust of partisan politics, and that is as it should be. This matter transcends party politics. We are considering how Parliament can strengthen its role within an increasingly powerful European dimension. A constructive approach has been taken, which I am sure the Leader of the House will reflect on and then bring forward his further proposals.
We have been considerably helped in our work by the report of the Procedure Committee which was expanded upon by the Chairman, the hon. Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery). He will be aware that I disagree with some of the conclusions of his report. He chose to reject the evidence and ideas that I and my hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) put forward, but that does not undervalue the strength of his recommendations. I shall deal with the question of the Grand Committee later.
We were also helped in our deliberations by the work of the Select Committee on European Legislation whose Chairman, my hon. Friend for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), graces these sessions with an assiduousness that is unparalleled. He brings a considerable clarity to our debates. He and I disagree on a number of issues relating

to Europe but on the key question of the importance of scrutiny and the way in which Parliament should deal with that, we are at one.
I was interested to note the approach taken by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to the question of scrutiny in our debate on the European Community a couple of weeks ago. The hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) asked whether the right hon. Gentleman could mention a single debate
in which the Government changed their position as a result of the views expressed in the House?
The Foreign Secretary replied:
Having taken part in such debates, I am sure that the Minister's view is often shaped"—
and there were cries of dismay at that point, or perhaps they were cries of disbelief. After all, the Foreign Secretary is a writer of fiction—of extremely good novels—and perhaps right hon. and hon. Members felt that he had slipped into his writing mode as distinct from his ministerial mode. Nevertheless, he went on:
No, I mean that. Ministers' views are shaped and shifted by many angles of approach as a result of such debates. That is what Parliament is about. One does not expect Ministers to do 180 degree turns in public but one expects them—and this is what happens—to be influenced and to tell their officials as they leave the Box, 'I do not want to go through that again'." —[Official Report, 11 June 1990; Vol. 174, c.26.]
Hansard records that there was laughter at that point, and so it should.
The new doctrine of scrutiny and accountability of the Executive is to give the Minister a sufficiently hard time that the barometer of dissent is taken to the officials in the Box, whom we are not supposed to mention, with the message that the Minister does not want to go through a similar experience again. I do not know whether that was a description or an incitement, but it certainly gave an interesting insight into the way that the Government view such matters. The Leader of the House may say that Parliaments throughout the Community, if not across a wider spectrum, view us with considerable envy, but I feel that we should have a rather more systematic method of tackling accountability.
The Government's approach is illustrated also by the Prime Minister's throwaway line when she reported to the House this afternoon on the European summit. In the off-the-cuff way in which she seems now to conduct her diplomacy, she described the social charter—against which huge battalions of Government Ministers and endless numbers of civil servants are deployed, on the grounds that the charter would jeopardise jobs and pose the threat of a Marxist regime on this nation—as conferring "piffling little powers".
That way of balancing the business that we conduct in relation to the Community has been a characteristic of the past 11 years. Although the Government have come round to the conversion of the power and role of the British Parliament, the past 11 years have been characterised by a gradual but increasingly pronounced reduction in the role of parliamentary power over the Executive.
One significant example is the reports from what used to be called the Foreign Affairs Ministerial Council, which meets monthly and is the senior Council of Ministers meeting held between the Heads of Government summits—the European Council. It has been renamed the General Affairs Council, but it retains a supervisory and almost executive role.
For many years, it was a matter of form to make an oral report to Parliament, followed by cross-examination in


this chamber, on reports from that Council. More recently, there was a two-and-a-half year gap between oral statements, and on 21 February this year, it was only through your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, on a request made by myself, that the Government were forced to the House on a private notice question to account for the deliberations of the extremely important Foreign Affairs Council on 19 and 20 February, when the British Government were beached on the question of sanctions against South Africa.
So, on the one hand, the Prime Minister's view, expressed in a reply on 1 May to the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) is:
We should stop any more centralisation and make certain that the future of the Community is implementation of measures through the national Parliaments."—[Official Report, 1 May 1990; Vol. 171, c. 907.]
That is the rhetoric but, as the Daily Mail so prosaically puts it today, the other side of the prime ministerial coin is clearly different, and we realise that Parliament has been kept constantly in the dark for 11 years. If we are witnessing a change in the Government's position, we welcome it strongly. My hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) made that clear in his opening remarks.
We are talking about the balance of accountability between the Executive and the legislature and about how Ministers can be held accountable, not just for their ministerial role and duty, but as legislators in the Council of Ministers—an organisation which meets behind closed doors, and whose deliberations are not open to the same scrutiny as are parliamentary affairs in this country and throughout the European Community.
The Government's response to the recommendations of the Procedure Committee goes some way towards meeting the desire, demand and need for accountability, but perhaps it does not yet go far enough. All too oftern we forget that the Community, through the Council of Ministers, deals not with peripheral, subsidiary legislation but with primary legislation which—as we have seen in the past few weeks—has supremacy over British law. That is the qualitative distinction: matters may have been considered by national or supranational Governments until now, but the Community is engaged with primary legislation, so this Parliament has a right to be involved in the process because it affects the daily lives of people in this country.
Hon. Members have dealt with a number of issues which I shall briefly touch upon. Inevitably, as Members of Parliament, we look to our own role here. The restrictions on telephone calls outside the United Kingdom and on travel have been a continual irritation. I am glad that the Leader of the House has pledged to make progress on that matter. I hope that progress will not be held up by any attempt to do package deals, which might frustrate the needs, desires and the operational effectiveness of hon. Members.
I am not suggesting an open-ended commitment to travel within the European Community, but it should not be confined to members of Select Committees. One of the regrettable features is that foreign travel is mostly confined to Select Committee members. I am not making a point as Opposition spokesman on foreign affairs and a shadow Minister, but we are one of the few categories not entitled to travel and to investigate the affairs that we have to talk

about. If we are to consider ability to travel within the European Community, as we should, it should not be confined to members of Select Committees.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland said, we believe that too few special Standing Committees are being proposed and not enough people will be involved. There are problems of their organisation: how will Ministers, who are members of Committees, at the same time be subject to cross-examination by those same Committees?
My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South referred to the concept of automaticity. We believe that, on balance, the House should have the right to make the decision, rather than documents being referred to the Committees on a large scale.
I disagree with the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber that we should go back to having a European Question Time slot, as there is not a single departmental Question Time that does not involve a large proportion of questions about the Community. To push European matters back to Foreign Office questions would be to restrict ourselves to institutional affairs, which would restrict hon. Members' rights to deal with other issues.
I strongly support the view expressed by the Chairman of the Scrutiny Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South and by the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) that in the interim the Scrutiny Committee should be able to consider wider issues than those to which it must confine itself at present. The hon. Member for Saffron Walden made the valid point that two intergovernmental conferences are about to start and said that the Scrutiny Committee will not be able to consider the wider issues involved because there is no document on which it can base its considerations.

Mr. Cash: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Robertson: I am afraid that I am running out of time. On a world service broadcast that we recorded this afternoon, I told the hon. Gentleman that I should feel inclined to allow him to intervene in my speech—but not in the last minute. If I did so, it would deprive the Minister of the right to be intervened on by the chairman of the Bruges group.
I regret that the Procedure Committee rejected our idea of a European Grand Committee. I stand by that idea, as I still believe that such a Committee would have immensely good qualities. I am sure that if the House looked into the matter in greater detail, it would be attracted to the idea.
The Leader of the House was right in one important regard as well as in some of the details. This debate is, and should be, about maximising the influence of Britain in the increasingly important European law-making procedures. That is the common interest of hon. Members on both sides of the House. The Government's contribution to the debate has been positive in that regard, even if it has been slightly defective in the limited respects that we have identified.
For the moment, we reserve judgment and await the considered response to this constructive and wide-ranging debate.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Francis Maude): When the House of Commons debates its own role and functions, there is occasionally a tendency for our discussions to lapse into


narcissism and introversion. There is sometimes even a sense of undue self-importance. I am happy to say that this has not been such a debate. It has been a serious and sensible debate about an important matter which concerns not only the House of Commons but the process of government and the way in which the United Kingdom operates within the European Community.
One of the many good things about the debate has been the atmosphere surrounding our discussion of specific proposals. I have some sympathy with the remarks in the Procedure Committee report about some of our late night debates. I do not want to disparage those debates, to which I shall refer later, but it seems that there is a tendency for old and general battles of principle to be refought—although, as I have said, I do not disparage those points of principle, because many of them are important. What has emerged from this debate is the sense that however we feel about the European Community—whether we are enthusiastic about it, whether we are idealistic, whether we think that it is perfect or imperfect—we are in it and we have to live with it and make the best of it. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House said, we must look at ways of maximising our influence within the Community. That concept has provided a good framework for the debate.
I was not here for the whole of the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor), but I have seen a note of it and I heard some of it. If I have a criticism of the way in which my hon. Friend puts his case, it is that he is perhaps somewhat defeatist about the role that the House can play. My hon. Friend is absolutely right when he says that the House of Commons, in the process of scrutiny, does not exercise direct legislative control and that it does not go through matters clause by clause in the way that it does on domestic legislation. However, that does not mean that the process of scrutiny is an empty process, or that it is meaningless or merely a sop to the House of Commons. I cannot emphasise too much that we take the process extremely seriously.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East and other hon. Members are right to say that qualified majority voting—both in the treaty as it was originally and as extended in the Single European Act—makes a difference. We are very rarely out-voted. Since the Single European Act was passed, we have been out-voted on three occasions. Two were on the same dossier because, far from our being dragged into something excessively European against our will, we were concerned that it was not proceeding towards fast enough integration. We were having difficulty overcoming protectionist restriction elsewhere.
Scrutiny of Community legislation has played an important part in the work of the House of Commons since we joined the Community. As the report of my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emergy) makes clear, there has not been a significant review of the procedures for the past 12 years. I am sure that the changes that the Procedure Committee has made—and the changes that the Government are canvassing—will make those procedures even more effective.
I regard myself as something of a veteran of the late night debates. In my role at the Foreign Office, I undertake few of them, but when I was a Minister at the Department

of Trade and Industry conducting the 1992 negotiations, it seemed as if all 50 of the scrutiny debates were conducted by me personally. There were times when I was participating in one every week and many were late at night. That was not always terribly convenient. Nevertheless, they were good debates and those who took an interest played a full part.
I was glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) drew attention to the fact that the debates increasingly take place early in the process. It has been the Government's deliberate intention to ensure that the House has an opportunity to influence and to shape the decision-making process early when it is still capable of being shaped.
I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) that it is rare for those debates to take place in retrospect. I can think of few occasions when that has happened recently. If it does happen, it is regrettable, but it is sometimes inescapable if events move very fast, and the Government are keen to ensure that the debates take place in good time.
I hope that that keenness and the fact that Ministers take those debates seriously will show my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) that the Government take this process seriously. I know of no Minister who is involved with day-to-day Community business—there are many of us now—who takes lightly the process of scrutiny and of submitting himself or herself to answer to the House of Commons for the Government's position.

Mr. Cash: Does my hon. Friend recall that with respect to both the Madrid summit and the Ashford castle meeting on economic and monetary union, with the paper presented by Mr. Christophersen, there did not appear to be an opportunity for the House to consider the implications, although the papers were available through the European Community?

Mr. Maude: That point is familiar to me, and the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) also made it. I do not think that any of us are under an illusion. As we move towards the intergovernmental conferences which begin at the end of this year, the House must have a proper opportunity to debate the position. We have already had the chance to debate economic and monetary union. It was an extremely good debate on important matters that the House of Commons should debate. Whether they fall strictly within the process of scrutiny, as the hon. Member for Newham, South and my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) would wish, is a matter of secondary importance.
The process of scrutiny is effective. If I may put it personally, it certainly feels effective when one is the Minister expounding a measure to Parliament. The House contains a fund of expertise and specialist knowledge to which Ministers are exposed in scrutiny debates and cannot fail to be influenced. In many of the debates, my opening speech frequently resembled the process of giving evidence because there were frequent interventions from hon. Members asking detailed factual questions or questions of principle. It is right that Ministers should be subjected to that cross-examination and required to answer to the House of Commons on the effects of any


proposal and on the Government's position. The proposed improvements will make that system an even stronger discipline.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) was right to say that a good strong scrutiny process strengthens the hands of negotiators by providing a clear expression of parliamentary views. That advantage is shared by few other Ministers around the negotiating table. That is not a claim that we are the only perfect representative system in Europe, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) might suggest, but our system of scrutiny is better developed than most others within the Community. That is a fact that is recognised by others as well as being trumpeted by us.
A particular example of the strengthening of the Government's position as a result of debate was the debate on economic and monetary union to which I have referred. Last November, it became clear that a single currency in the manner of Delors stage 3 simply was not acceptable to the House of Commons. That is not to say that it will never be acceptable to a later House of Commons, but it is not acceptable to this House of Commons. That means that the Government's position in those negotiations is perfectly clear.
The pattern of scrutiny in other member states is changing. In some countries there is detailed debate. In Denmark, for example, where scrutiny has been less highly developed hitherto, there is a growing interest in developing that process. In France, the scrutiny committee meets weekly, the German committee was in London this week, to discuss our arrangements, the Dutch committee meets fortnightly and I know that new scrutiny committees have been established recently in Spain and in Greece. Many other member states now have scrutiny procedures, many of which are being reviewed.
All that work was given a renewed boost by the conclusions of the Dublin Council this week, on which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister reported earlier. The documents on institutional reform prepared by the Foreign Ministers clearly stated that one of the mechanisms for improving democratic legitimacy in the Community is the greater involvement of national parliaments. Two years ago there was almost no discussion at Community level of the role of national Parliaments within the Community. We have always argued for that,

and Mr. Delors, the President of the Commission, helped to stimulate a wider discussion in his speech at the European Parliament last year.
It is worth examining briefly what we already do. Making Ministers answerable to the House of Commons for what they do in the European Community goes much wider than the simple process of scrutiny. The process of parliamentary questions to Ministers and to the Prime Minister involves a great degree of accountability. It is not right to condemn European Community questions to a ghetto of their own, because Ministers should answer to the House for what they do in the Community, as they do for domestic responsibilities.
I give evidence to the Scrutiny Committee every six months, at the beginning of the presidency, on the plans for the presidency and submit myself to its expert interrogation. Before going to the European Council, the Foreign Secretary gives evidence to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. The Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee has made a study of economic and monetary union, and there is a wide range of other aspects of accountability.
I know that there is much anxiety about automatic referral, and my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) suggested that the proposal might be left for a little while. We shall consider the matter carefully.

It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Statutory Instruments, &c.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(5) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.).

TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT

That the draft Employment Subsidies Act 1978 (Renewal) (Great Britain) Order 1990, which was laid before this House on 15th May, be approved.

AGRICULTURE

That the Home-Grown Cereals Authority Oilseeds Levy Scheme (Approval) Order 1990, a copy of which was laid before this House on 18th May, be approved.

That the Home-Grown Cereals Authority Levy (Variation) Scheme (Approval) Order 1990, dated 15th May 1990, a copy of which was laid before this House on 24th May, be approved—[Mr. Greg Knight.]

Question agreed to.

Romania

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Greg Knight.]

Mr. George Galloway: In opening this debate on the Government's policy on Romania, I should make a couple of declarations. First, although I have no pecuniary interest in Romania, I am writing a book on the history of the Romanian revolution. I am advised that I should declare that as a potential interest; I certainly hope that it will become one.
Secondly, I should give a political health warning. Although I have travelled regularly to Romania since the revolution, I never travelled there before it and would not have done so, such was my abhorrence of the evil and criminal Ceausescu regime, which was overthrown by the Romanian people's revolution on 22 December.
That political health warning is important, because I want to show that the Government's policy on Romania is seriously flawed, that the Government completely misjudged the dramatic events that unfolded in the capital, Bucharest, earlier this month, and that as a result they seriously over-reacted in a way that was inimical not only to our interests but to those of the Romanian people and the broader cause of bringing the former regimes of the Soviet bloc into the mainstream of European life.
In making that case, I wish to draw on several statements made by the Minister in the days and hours after those dramatic events. Making due allowance for the fact that events moved fast, I must say, although I greatly admire the Minister and often agree with him on foreign affairs matters, that some serious errors were made.
The Minister—I have gone through the transcripts of his interviews with several television and radio reporters—took a consistent line: that the Romanian Government had been responsible for the brutal crushing of a peaceful demonstration, mainly by students, against the Government of Romania and its policies. The Minister told Brian Hanrahan:
We have seen no reports of a systematic attempt at a coup … What we are worried about is the way in which at the first challenge from opposition groups, which I have no doubt was an inconvenient challenge, they seem to have reacted in a way all too reminiscent of the old days.
In interview after interview, that line was maintained. The statements made at the time equated in many respects the new elected authorities in Romania with the old discredited authorities. The comparison was deeply offensive to the democrats and revolutionaries in Romania who had overthrown the dictatorship. They had risked their lives at a time when it was not clear how the dice would fall. Those men put their lives on the line and it was offensive to them to be compared in that way.
I have the advantage over the Minister because I was on the streets of Bucharest during those dramatic events. I can assure the Minister from what I saw with my own eyes that if it was not an attempted coup that was unfolding in Bucharest, I do not know what an attempted coup is. I followed the crowd and mob through the streets of Bucharest. Sometimes I was only a few yards behind them, although in most cases I was 100 yards or so away from the events.
I watched the crowd of what the Minister described as student demonstrators invade the Interior Ministry, which is the Romanian equivalent of the Home Office. They

stormed that building and set it ablaze. I followed them as they moved on to the central police station which is their equivalent of Scotland Yard. They smashed a police truck through the station's locked doors. I saw them invade the central police station and set it ablaze. They freed prisoners and they looted artefacts in the police station. They even broke into an armoury and had begun to liberate weapons before the police opened fire. If that was not the beginnings of an attempted coup, I do not know what it was.
I followed the crowd to the ugliest incident—the siege of the television station, that extremely emotive totem of the December revolution. The crowd invaded the television station and they beat hell out of everyone they could get their hands on. Even the weather man was savagely beaten by the crowd. Journalists and broadcasters were beaten and film was destroyed. The transmission of the entire country's television went off for an hour. The central television station was occupied by hundreds of demonstrators, but the Minister described all that as if it was a common or garden demonstration of the kind that we might see on our streets. However, we did have a particularly bad demonstration some weeks ago, and I was there as well. The whole country was rightly angered and shaken to the core by the scenes of violence, but they bore no resemblance to the serious situation in Bucharest in those late Tuesday and early Wednesday hours.
I was able to test the character of the crowd of what the Minister persisted in describing as students. On the Sunday after the events I have outlined, the Observer described the crowd as liberals. I make no apology for repeating what I have said in the House before: the political character of a significant number of the people in that demonstration was ultra-right, racist and anti-semitic.
Two of the slogans that I heard from innumerable people in that demonstration were "Out with the Spanish yid Roman"—Prime Minister Petro Roman, whose mother is a Jew—and "Iliescu was a whoremaster presiding over a brothel of reds and yids." For the nationalists and anti-semites in the crowd, the terms "communist" and "Jewish" were entirely synonymous. The Minister is aware that that is a problem across central and eastern Europe. It would be a fundamental mistake for the British Government to imagine that that was a crowd of student liberals out on an everyday demonstration. It certainly was not that.
While I am at it, I wish to correct a particularly offensive error that the Minister made in every one of the transcripts. In every interview he accused President Iliescu of Romania of describing the demonstrators as gipsies. There is no record of the president using such a description. The word for gipsy is "tigani". In any record that I have seen—I have searched for it—the president never used that word. He used the word "golani" which in Romanian means tramps or low-life characters, which some, if by no means all, of the demonstrators were. The Minister's accusation was entirely wrong. His mistake was politically important. It is the ultra-right in Romania which hates the gipsies, the Jews and other minorities in the country. It is important that that reality is understood.
If the House does not believe me, I quote to it an authority to whom I do not usually turn. Conor Cruise O'Brien is a well-known Conservative commentator and he wrote an article in, of all places, The Times on 22 June this year. It said:


Mobs of both persuasions menace Romanian liberty. Conor Cruise O'Brien argues that student protestors threaten democracy as much as miners with clubs … This was no protest, but a student-led attempt at a putsch against the recently elected government of Romania. … The great difference between the two sets of mob violence is that the first was directed against the elected government, while the second was initiated by the elected government in its own defence.
That is another fundamental reality which the Minister has not recognised and should recognise this evening. Not to do so would be to draw the wrong conclusions.
The Government's conclusions have been mean and spiteful. They amount to a demand for economic sanctions against the Romanian Government. In his speech to the Press Gallery on 20 June, the Foreign Secretary said that with his advocacy, but not his alone, the Romanian Government would not be invited to the discussions of the Group of 24 with the emerging European democracies and the European Community. He said that conditionality must apply. On the basis of that conditionality, the Romanian Government would not receive the aid package that other east European Governments would receive.
Such a stance sits uneasily with the Government's attitude to other countries. They do business as usual with Baghdad and Peking. Baghdad has committed crimes against our own country and Peking has committed crimes on a gigantic scale, mowing down thousands of people with machine guns. We can do business as usual with them, but we take a mean and spiteful attitude to the Romanian Government for the events that I have described in the time available to me and which Conor Cruise O'Brien described in The Times at greater length, very well. The Government should have the courage to say that, in retrospect, knowing facts that they did not know previously, they are prepared to think again.
To his credit, the Minister made it clear in all the transcripts that the National Salvation Front Government have the support of the great majority of the Romanian people. The hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) and the deputy leader of the Labour party, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) were observers at the elections. The National Salvation Front Government seek to build a mixed economy and are heading towards a market economy. They are determined to develop parliamentary democracy in their country. If we turn our back on them and slam the door in their face, we shall send the message to them that the European Community and countries such as Britain are not interested in helping them through these difficult times.
The Romanian people need our help to defend and develop their democracy. They feel that Britain is a cradle of democracy which has a lot to teach them. However, we can only teach people with whom we are engaged in dialogue. We could help to provide a genuine police force. In the events that I have described, the police ran away: they hightailed it out of town, so frightened were they of the mob. We could help them train a police force which could face up to civil disorder, and so avoid the ugly scenes involving the miners and other workers on the streets of Bucharest.
We should also encourage trade. Romania is not some impoverished banana republic in central Africa or Latin America, but a European country with no foreign debts, tremendous natural resources and a big market for us—24 million people. It would be foolhardy of Britain to turn its

back on such a country. The French will not do so; French diplomacy is active in Romania. Nor will other European countries take the view that Britain is taking.
I have spoken to the Minister previously about the question of child AIDS in Romania. There has been a tremendous response to that from the British public through articles in The Guardian, an article by Anna Smith in the Daily Record and another by Bob Wylie in The Observer. Those powerful articles have brought the human tragedy—the legacy of the Ceausescu period—to the attention of the British people. They have achieved a phenomenal response from British donors, who have sent hundreds of thousands of pounds. Many other groups, such as orphans and people living in penury on low wages, have had almost nothing to buy for the past 10 to 20 years.
Let us not turn our backs on those people.The British people would not understand if, at the same time as they were giving with their cheque books to help Romania, the British Government were slamming the door in the face of the Romanian Government. I beg the Minister and the Government to think again.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. William Waldegrave): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway) for giving the House the chance to have this timely short debate on Romania, and also for his fiery and heartfelt speech. He will not be surprised if I do not agree with everything that he has said, but we both agree that we care for the future of Romania.
All hon. Members and members of the British public who watched the events of the revolution through those moving television broadcasts wish Romania success. My argument with the hon. Gentleman is not about the horrors out of which Romania has fought its way. I pay tribute to him: unlike a number of others—whom I will leave him to name—he did not accept the hospitality of the previous dictator. His hands are clean in that regard. He has also made a considerable contribution on the humanitarian side, along with other hon. Members from both sides of the House.
How do we judge the recent events? It is clear that, after 40 years of a particularly ruthless communist dictatorship—including 25 years under President Ceausescu, and his predecessor was no picnic—it was too much to hope that the transition to freedom would pass without any difficulty or hitches. The Ceausescu era fostered intolerance and, above all, distrust and mutual suspicion. The strongest feeling that I encountered when I visited Romania was the lack of trust between people that had been engendered by those years. Everything had to be learned from scratch. In other countries of eastern and central Europe, the often sullen, slow-moving and incompetent communist bureaucracies could at least be turned to democratic use. However, in Romania even the bureaucracies were corrupted by Ceausescu and the organisations—down to the football teams—were often corrupted, and involved in the Securitate.
After the revolution, from January onwards, the National Salvation Front came under criticism from its political opponents in the reformed and newly reconstituted political parties, and on the streets, for its ties with the personnel and the behaviour of the old regime. Nevertheless, the fact that such opinons could be freely


expressed was a measure of the change that had occurred. When I was in Romania in January, I found chaos and disorganisation, but also optimism and hope for the future.
In the campaign leading up to elections on 20 May, there was certainly no shortage of well-founded allegations that Mr. Iliescu and his colleagues in the NSF were not playing the democratic game as it should have been played. The opposition parties faced the intimidation of their candidates and supporters and persistent difficulties in setting up publications and making their voices heard. The NSF took maximum advantage of its control of radio and television.
To leave the Romanian Government in no doubt about our concern at what was going on we summoned the Romanian chargé on 11 May and pointed out that the way in which the elections were held would have a great impact on British and western attitudes to Romania in the future.
In the event, few independent observers doubt that the campaign, as it was run, helped to increase the already substantial support enjoyed by the NSF. Despite the limitations of the campaign, however, the elections were, if hardly a paragon, at least an important step towards democracy. Throughout the long day at polling stations nationwide Romanians of different political persuasions co-operated, in the main peacefully and enthusiastically, to elect a President and two chambers of a Parliament.
That there were many departures from ideal democratic practice—instances of malpractice and fraud—is not in doubt. Most independent observers, however, including hon. Members from both sides of the House, came to the conclusion, which I share, that even if the campaign and the poll had been scrupulously fair, Mr. Iliescu and the NSF still would have won a considerable majority. They concluded that the election should, by and large and in the circumstances, be taken as valid.
By early June, we were therefore hopeful that Romania was starting on the difficult road to democracy, although we had no illusions about the magnitude of the task facing her. The events of 13 and 15 June put paid, for the time being, to our cautious optimism.
To some extent the hon. Member for Hillhead has conflated two separate events. It is true that in the early hours of 13 June the Romanian security forces cleared, by force, the demonstrators, at that time largely peaceful, from University square. He is right that the second event involved a group of largely young thugs—possibly egged on by others with grudges against the Government. We shall probably never know the full story. They attacked the police and others with sticks, stones and petrol bombs.
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there were scenes of disgraceful violence. The hon. Gentleman saw demonstrators storm the police headquarters and the television station. I do not for one moment condone that violence directed at everybody. I think that there is still little evidence to show that it marshalled forces that could possibly be described as those representing an incipient coup. It is perfectly fair, however, for the hon. Gentleman to say that in a democracy—everyone in Romania should now be seeking to build democracy—those opposing the elected Government should do so peaceably. There can be no excuse for the mayhem of 13 June in Bucharest.
What we must judge—we deal with Governments—is the response of the Romanian authorities. Here I part from the hon. Gentleman. The violence organised by the Romanian authorities was of a different order altogether. It is the duty of an elected Government not just to win an election, but to wield power within the law. That is why we were so profoundly shocked by President Iliescu's decision to call on the miners to act as vigilantes. The systematic and ruthless attempt by those miners to incapacitate the main opposition parties was profoundly shocking not just to Britain, but to other western countries.
The hon. Gentleman gave his own eye-witness account. There are many others, for example, the report carried by the Daily Express of Monday 18 June about Mrs. Rodica Glaser, who was also in Bucharest and whom my officials have questioned. She saw the systematic beating and killing of people and the raping of women by those so-called miners.
There is no doubt that the brutal savagery of 14 and 15 June was directed by people in positions of authority. How else would those miners have been able to find straight away the offices and homes of the Liberal party and Peasants' party leaders? Why else would there be so many reports of well-dressed figures directing the violence, while the police—not in every case running away, according to accounts that I have had—stood idly by?
When groups of vigilantes called in by the highest figure in the land roam the streets dispensing summary justice to those whose opinions, or even appearance, they do not care for, and when the elected leader does not condemn such activities but instead thanks their perpetrators, prospects for democracy are dark indeed.
Those so-called miners went on a rampage through the gipsy quarter, handing out violence of a high degree. That is why the British Government have roundly condemned President Iliescu's action. We did so by way of an immediate diplomatic protest in London, and in Bucharest on 15 June. On 18 June the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and his European Community colleagues issued a vigorously worded statement—all of them, not just us—deploring the behaviour of President Iliescu's Government. They decided unanimously to put off a decision on signature of the European Community—Romania trade and cooperation agreement.
As a further sign of disapproval—again unanimously—Romania is not being invited to the ministerial meeting of the Group of 24 on 4 July to discuss aid to eastern Europe. Humanitarian aid must continue, but there can be no question at present of the aid that is conditional on the development of policies which we support being released as if those conditions had been met.
It is important that certain matters should be raised here and now because they may help. On 21 June the British ambassador in Bucharest invoked the CSCE human rights mechanism to raise with the Romanian authorities the fate of the three arrested student leaders—Munteanu, Dinca and Nica—and some hon. Members may remember meeting Mr. Nica when he was here in March for the political seminar organised by the IPU and the GB-East Europe Centre.
Even though, in all those cases, the Romanian Government have accepted that they hold the students in question, they had not as of this afternoon given access to Leon Nica, whose family has still not been allowed access to him or to contact him, and he has been moved from


place to place apparently without any information being given to his family, let alone to lawyers or to any other legal authorities.
Investigations are continuing. We shall watch carefully the way in which they are carried out and the way those under arrest are treated. Hon. Members will have seen that Mr. Munteanu was interviewed on Romanian television a couple of days ago and rejected the charges against him. We hope that that portends a more open-minded approach to those under arrest.

Mr. Galloway: How is it that it can be business as usual with Peking after the gunning down there of thousands of students, yet we are freezing out the Romanians in response to the events that we are discussing tonight?

Mr. Waldegrave: I had intended to deal with that point. We are doing business as usual with Romania. There is no question of economic sanctions against that country or of our trying to stop trade with Romania. Indeed, we—the British Council and others—are trying to step up contacts with Romania.
But we are saying that funds that we—bilaterally in this country or collectively in the Group of 24 and the European Community—have established to respond to the steps taken by eastern and central European countries which are building free institutions based on the rule of law must be conditional on progress being made.
It would be wrong and insulting to the reformers in Romania and elsewhere if we pretended that the progress in Romania was equivalent to that in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. It would be wrong and untruthful. That is why all the countries concerned in the establishment of those conditions, including France, have agreed that those conditional funds should not be released.
But that is not to say that we are boycotting Romania or are not trading with that country. We trade with many regimes worse than President Iliescu's. We must, for we have to live in the world and we still have much higher hopes that Romania, after this setback, will return to the road of optimism and progress.
We recognise the difficulties that Romania faced and still faces, but we must also recognise, and give the clearest signals, that the way in which the undoubtedly difficult situation was handled by the Government—the ruthless violence meted out by the vigilantes—cannot receive in Britain the same sort of support as the methods and peaceful developments that have taken place in Czechoslovakia and in other countries. We shall not forget Romania. Our wish to see her consolidate her revolution and develop into a truly free society is as strong as ever.
The hon. Gentleman will recall the criteria that the Group of 24 set out for assistance to eastern Europe. They included a multi-party system, and free and fair elections—those two are well on the way. The rule of law was shatteringly put at risk by the way the demonstrations, first peaceful and then violent, were handled. We are keeping a close watch on those who were arrested. I have not heard accounts of miners being arrested; all those arrested seem to come from the demonstrators' side—many of them, like Mr. Nica, students with long histories of peaceful activism against the previous regime. If we had seen the pursuit of some of those who raped women on the streets and beat up girls because they were wearing western clothes, we might have considered that encouraging.
The other criteria were respect for human rights, freedom of the media and economic liberalisation. It is clear to all of us in Europe, not just Britain, that for the moment, Romania falls short in many of those aspects. We recognise that not everything can be done overnight. We do not expect miracles, but we were greatly encouraged initially when Romania accepted all her CSCE commitments. It was a measure of our disappointment that we were so distressed when those fair words were followed, first, by fraud in the election—limited, but still serious—and now, by violence against the political opposition.

The motion having been made after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twenty-nine minutes to Eleven o'clock.